On the road to VLC 1.1.0 part 1: faster

15 March 2010

Let’s go on with the first part of my articles to introduce you to VLC 1.1.0.

Decoding HD

In these days of HD video, speeding of decoding is more and more critical, and VLC has not shine on these aspects lately, especially on H.264.

VLC 1.1 should partly fix those issues, with:

  • faster CPU decoding, especially on Windows,
  • GPU decoding on Windows Vista/7 and on Linux,
  • DSP decoding with OpenMax IL on embedded Linux, like Maemo.

GPU decoding

Using DxVA2 on Windows Vista and 7 and VAAPI on Linux, the decoding stage of VLC framework can now be done by the GPU.

If you have a compatible GPU, especially an nVidia, it should go way faster. VLC should consume less than 10% of your CPU and your CPU shouldn’t be at full speed anymore.

It even works on Ion/Atom machines! This is cool for HTPC.

DSP decoding using OpenMax IL

VLC has a new decoder that can use OpenMax IL codecs for DSP decoding

If this is chinese to you, it means that VLC is almost the same speed and energy consumption than the native player on the N900.

OpenMax IL in VLC can decode and encode most of the codecs: Mpeg2, Mpeg4, H264, H263, WMV1, WMV2, WMV3, RV10, RV20, RV30, RV40 and aac, amr, mp3.

Better audio pipeline

Also, the audio pipeline has been reworked, (and accelerated on ARM devices), so that we less conversion occur and better filtering happen.

Of course, audio is not that critical today, but it just makes VLC a better audio player.

Less Ram and Less threads

VLC 1.1 should use less threads as Rémi wrote.

VLC 1.1 should also use less Ram than 1.0.5, even though, this might not be very visible in all situations.

Conclusion

VLC 1.1.0 should be faster to decode, using less CPU and able to leverage GPU and DSPs; it should use less RAM and less threads. What more do you want ?

Update Part 2: Better

Jean-Baptiste Kempf

1.1
Atom
DxVA2
GPU
H.264
Maemo
N900
OpenMax
VAAPI
VLC
Windows
NVidia

Comments

  1. On 28 May 28280, 8:10 by Bytesland S.E.

    VLC 1.1.0 plays Youtube video direcly from URL. It’s a great application but can you tell me where can i get that Application launcher?

  2. On 13 May 13130, 12:51 by oil purifier

    try OpenCL.

  3. On 24 May 24240, 10:33 by carnap

    Great work. Thanks for the wonderful player. I like it very much.

    Do you plan to implement UPnP AV or DLNA? I’m lookin for a media renderer software and I don’t like Windows Media Player 12.

  4. On 19 May 19190, 10:56 by maffe

    Why don’t you use OpenCL. It is available everywhere. Or will OS X support be added later?

  5. On 16 May 16160, 1:39 by Bio

    embedding in gtk window thought wid?
    accept commando from stdin?

  6. On 15 May 15150, 7:02 by Andrei

    “What more do you want ?”

    Better interface. I’ve used MPC to play HD videos and since than I sticked to it. Functions that I like a lot at it are going fullscreen on another monitor and options for shuting down the computer after playing a video. (And default keyboard settings seem better).

  7. On 15 May 15150, 2:58 by JBK

    @Jon: VAAPI can wrap all other linux APIs

  8. On 15 May 15150, 1:54 by Jon Pritchard

    Sounds great. I wish the situation on Linux for GPU decoding was better, there’s just too many APIs.

    I love the sound of all this progress on ARM. I hope it works well on the new Pandora console.

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