VLC Media Player 3.0

VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

VLC plays absolutely anything. It supports an enormous number of multimedia formats, and does not require you to download additional codecs. VLC features a complete streaming server, with extended features like video on demand, on-the-fly transcoding, granular speed controls, frame-by-frame advancement and more. It can also be used as a server for unicast or multicast streams in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

VLC Media Player now features fully customizable toolbars, customizable Skins, supports playback for broken files as well as zipped files, and so much more.

VLC Media Player 3.0.0 highlights:

The 3.0.x branch will contain the last releases running on:

Windows XP, Vista, and the servers equivalent of those Windows versions
macOS 10.7, 10.8 & 10.9, iOS 7 & 8
Android 2.x, 3.x, 4.0.x & 4.1.x
Compilers before gcc 5.0 and clang 3.4, or equivalent

Core

Support output renderers, like ChromeCast
Support network browsing for distant filesystems (SMB, FTP, SFTP, NFS...) and rewrite the parsing of the media files and inputs
Support keystores: fetch and store passwords securely (sic!) for common protocols (HTTP, SMB, SFTP, FTP, RTSP ...)
Autodetect external audio tracks (ac3, m4a, aac, dts...) similar to subtitles
Support HDMI passthrough for Audio HD codecs, like E-AC3, TrueHD or DTS-HD
Support for 12bits codec and extended colorspaces (HDR)
VLC now assumes vlcrc config file is in UTF-8
Support portable version of Windows build (create a "portable/" folder)
Support wayland surface type
Allow to start the video paused on the first frame
Refactor preparsing input
EPG rework: table and single event updates, now using network time
Refactor and fix subtitles es selection. Demuxers can now overrides category single only or multiple es behavior
Support for 360 video and audio, including viewpoint modification
Support for ambisonic audio and more than 8 audio channels
Support subtitles size live adjustments

Hardware Decoder

Support HEVC hardware decoding on Windows, using DxVA2 and D3D11
Support hardware decoding using Direct3D11, including GPU-zerocopy mode, and hardware filtering, for deinterlace and adjust
DxVA2 GPU-zerocopy for hardware decoding and displaying on Windows, and support for hardware filtering, for deinterlace and adjust
Support HEVC hardware decoding using OMX and MediaCodec (Android)
Use MediaCodec via NDK native API after Android Lollipop
Support MPEG-2, VC1/WMV3 on Android using MediaCodec
OMX GPU-zerocopy support for decoding and display on Android using OpenMax IL
Support 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 chroma samplings with VDPAU hw acceleration
Important VAAPI improvements for 10bits, HEVC, direct-rendering support
Support VP9 and WMV3 decoding using OMX and performance improvements
Important improvements for the MMAL decoder and output for rPI and rPI2
New hardware accelerated decoder for OS X and and iOS based on Video Toolbox supporting H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, H.265/HEVC, MPEG-4 Part 2, and DV