VLC Media Player is a versatile, stable and high quality free media player. It has dominated the free media player market for over a decade and looks like it may do for another 10 years, due to the constant development and improvements by VideoLAN Org. For the first time VideoLAN Org has released a version of VLC player that spans Android, iOS, desktop, WinRT and Windows Phone. This release also marks a global return to Apple’s App Store for the iOS version.

The iOS VLC app had, prior to this, been pulled from the App Store due to licensing problems, though an older version was released in a ‘hush hush’ manner in Apple’s New Zealand store earlier last month.

The Android version of the app has emerged from beta and will also support Android TV, while the Windows Phone will be released as an open beta (previous versions to this were closed betas that were only limited to select users).

The new version (2.2.0) of the desktop version, codenamed Weatherwax, is available now. It plays almost every video format that you can think of and comes stacked with new features such as the ability to automatically rotate vertical videos, support for resume playback on desktop, as well as improved support for Ultra High Definition codecs. Subtitles can also be downloaded via an extension. Unfortunately support for Google’s Chromecast is still missing, though it is chalked up for the upcoming 3.0 release that is due for release later in 2015.

Here is just a small section of the large amounts of updates that have been undertaken in this latest version of VLC Player:

• The licenses of more modules have changed from GPLv2+ to LGPLv2.1+, notably most of the streaming output, mixers and access output modules.


• Support automatic rotation using streams metadata, GPU-accelerated when possible.


• Add extensions manager and downloading from external repositories.


• Rework the metadata fetching algorithm and policies.


• Partial fix of playback of short audio samples.


• Added TLS support for ftp access and access New schemes for implicit (ftps) and explicit (ftpes) modes.


• MMS audio selection on split audio streams.


• Blu-Ray: support overlays, preferred menu languages, region selection and BD-J navigation.


• Digital Cinema Package support, including encrypted DCP with KDM.


• Partial fixes for Arccos protected DVDs.


• Fix CDDB lookups, including pregap data.


• Support VDPAU acceleration for GPU-zerocopy decoding.


• Support MediaCodec acceleration for GPU-zerocopy decoding.


• Add Media Foundation Transform audio and video decoder.


• Add video decoder module based on GStreamer plugins.


• Add MMAL decoder for Broadcom VideoCore chips (like the RaspberryPi) supporting MPEG-2 and H.264, supporting GPU-zerocopy display.


• Partial support for Voxware MetaSound.


• libvpx decoder for VP8 and VP9.


• Teletext subtitles display improvements.


• Mediacodec speed improvements on x86.


• Support setting the post processing level in Theora.


• Add MMAL based video output for RaspberryPi.


• New Oldmovie effect filter.


• New VHS effect filter.


• New Freeze effect filter.


• Support I422 and J422 in transform.


• NEON optimizations for de-interleaving chroma, notably NV12->I420.


• Fix audio bar graph activation and usage.


• Allow setting volume while not connected with PulseAudio.* Audio device notifications for WASAPI


• Fix replay of sound buffer in DirectSound.


• Split of MMDevice and WinRT audio modules.


• Numerous fixes on AUHAL, including device management and stream changes.


• Fixes for SPDIF passthru in most modules.


• Important rework of the Ogg muxer, notably for skeleton.


• Fixes for the AVI muxer to respect the specification.


• Support VP8 in OGG.


• Add HEVC muxing in MP4 and TS.


• Important rework of the transcoding module to fix numerous bugs.


• GSM, VP8, Opus and JPEG RTP packetization.


• HLS: Allow setting the first segment number and numerous improvements.


• New stats module to output block timing values and md5 sums.


• Transcode module access fps values as rationals now, eg 30000/1001.


• VLC now streams all elementary streams, you can revert to previous behaviour with –no-sout-all.


•  –ts-out option has been removed, it has been superceded by –demux demuxdump –demuxdump-access udp –demuxdump-file 127.0.0.1:1234.


• Support Metacube protocol when streaming over HTTP.


• add equalizer API libvlc_audio_equalizer_* functions.


• Add libvlc_media_player_program_scrambled function.


• Add a 3D OpenGL spectrum visualization.


• Allow setting the FFT windowing style for 3D and normal spectrum.


• Add support for subtitles drag ‘n drop in skins2.


• Update and improve Koreus, Dailymotion, Soundcloud and Youtube scripts.


• Numerous integer and heap overflow in Ogg, AVI, ASF, TTA and MP4 demuxers.


• iOS video output: use ios2.


• OpenMash H.261 video decoder.


• dirac encoder: use schroedinger.


• New translation in Urdu, Tatar, Silesian, Samoan, Kapampangan, N’ko, Kurdish, Kabyle, Mexican Spanish, Catalan, Amharic.