VLC for Windows gets updated with a new design and more

VLC has released a new update for its Windows app. The latest update brings a new user interface and some other improvements. One of the notable features of the latest update is the new Mini Player and improved settings. Here’s the full changelog:

Video output

VLC was using a Direct2D plugin for the video output. It was a Visual Studio project wrote in C++/CX. Performances and stability were really bad.
Steve Lhomme worked mainly on the Direct3D video output. It’s now sharing the same code between VLC for Desktop (Win32), and VLC for Windows Store (Desktop, tablet, phone). It is a huge improvement.

Steve then worked on the Hardware decoding and this new version includes our experimental code. It’s disabled by default as it’s still unstable but our internal betatesters clearly noticed the improvements coming on every nightly build.

We managed to play 720p on a Lumia 920, a 720p on a Lumia 720p, and a full HD mkv file on a Surface 2.

TagLib

That was hard as well because of the numerous and odd limitations of the WinRT platform. Now TagLib successfully reads the metadata of music and video files. It is also able to find the embedded album cover, but can’t find the cover if it’s in the same folder, because of the WinRT filesystem limitations.

libvlc updates

If you want to have a precise look at the changes made in VLC those past few months, you should have a look at the Jean-Baptiste Kempf blogposts he writes every week.

Also, we added the support for embedded SSA subtitles.

User Interface

The UI has been updated to match the new Windows 10 style. It’s also faster on the low-end devices like a Surface RT and Lumia 520,620 …
We added some pretty animations, and also a beta version of a Win2D component (thanks for the move to MIT license!) for the background slideshow.

Music library

We get the metadata from TagLib, which are more precise, and we know the difference between Artist and AlbumArtist.
There’s a new option “Add to current playlist”, to add an album or a track the playlist you’re currently playing.

Video library

Videos should resume where you left (was working with low success score on the previous version).
We also use TagLib to get the metadatas of your videos, as requested by our users.

Mini player

There’s a mini player! Click the button on the right of the repeat button. Works best on Windows 10, of course.

Search

We rewrote the Search engine from scratch and it should be faster. It’s still a work in progress and we would like to hear your feedback.

More settings

Several users asked for more control. We’re giving you more control like the ability to change the default home page, user rich animations in the app, etc.

The latest update for VLC is now live on the Windows Store and you can grab the app from here. If you’re a VLC user, what do you think of the latest update? Discuss in the comment section below.

Source: Thomas Nigro