Sergei "fyysik" Dolgov recently informed us he has been working on some enhancements and feature ideas for the BeOS/Haiku port of VLC (VideoLan Client). Discussion was held privately in BeShare, with some corrections and re-wording done before publication, as English is not native to Sergei.

Without further ado...

You said that VLC has some new additions coming for the BeOS/Haiku port? Can you explain them in some detail?
Yeah, I made two additions which will come for sure, and a third for the UI which I will discuss, if someone needs it.

What are the additions you made to VLC?
1) Added overlay support for those cards that worked with overlay in BeOS media Player, but not in VLC. For example, NeoMagic series of cards, used in several laptops.

The second addition needs a bit more explanation, because it is directly related to Haiku achievements. The VLC core is able to play multichannel sound, be it some bare soundfile, e.g. in AC3 format, or multichannel WAV, or for videos containing multichannel sound, like DVD/VOB with a52 encoding or DivX/Xivd with AC3 sound. Until now the BeOS front-end (plug-in in VLC terms) ignored it and forced VLC core to provide 2-channel stereo sound as maximal.

I noticed that Jerome Duval created sound drivers which really do support multichannel sound and asked him and Marcus Overhagen for advice, and clues on including in VLC BeOS plug-in code Haiku modules namely, haiku's SoundNode and haiku's version of BSoundPlayer. I made litle changes in Haiku code and changes in VLC BeOS-plugin code - and it is here!!! Currently it works fantastically, but expects Haiku's mixer to be installed.

What does a novice need to make this version of VLC work under BeOS?
In theory - OpenBeOS mixer replacement from BeBits, and download my build of VLC. I included Haiku code statically in build, and at the moment it requires soundcards with multichannel support, like SB Live Audigy 1 or Audigy2 or VIA, and Haiku's mixer which is a very good replacement for standard BeOS mixer. But there are two problems here:
1) Current VLC source has some bugs, not in BeOS parts, but in core, so it is unsuitable for novices.
2) It was built with new version of gcc 2.953 so under Dano/Zeta it requires one library from BeOS R5 Pro.

2nd problem will be solved soon - I will do a clean build with standard gcc, but this depends on VLC guys and Eric Petit especially.

For playing DVD discs with current nightly builds of VLC you should use command line:
vlc --audio-channel 0 dvdplay:/dev/disks/path_to_your_dvd/raw

This is why it is a bit unsuitable for novices but must be counted as a proof-of-concept.

Please explain the second problem.
As VLC is built with the freshest gcc, it may complain for some missing symbols under BONE/Dano/Zeta. Oliver Tappe will fix it with the next build but at the moment if it does'nt run, put in vlc/lib the libstdc++.r4.so library from BeOS R5 Pro. This is a stupid thing related to some STL inconsistency, and it will be fixed, but impatient people can test it now, taking in account two mentioned obstacles.

Using --audio-channel 0 is also very important, because in current build VLC does'nt set audio-track for DVD and does'nt allow to choose it (language) from menu so if you don't put it in command string you will listen to silence from DVD or VOB.

So, in a nutshell... a new version of VLC is being worked on for BeOS/Haiku that will have multi-channel support, with only a few issues at the moment to be aware of to make it work?
Yeah. It was very disappointing to discover when looking in VLC code that it don't allow multichannel only in BeOS :)

I mentioned a third thing and I wish to know users opinion on it. I made a change in the UI which allows to stretch VLC control window to a very big width like you see it in Be MediaPlayer and Be SoundRecorder. With future VLC core changes it is one of possible methods to allow more exact manual seeking, like you can do it in Be media apps. So I wish to ask if users like this "feature" to be added. At the moment we cannot provide really better seeking - VLC was streaming client, and it restricts this, but VLC core designers are working on it. Until that is done, we can use wider window for more exact seeking.

Your question is: "Would you like the abilty to stretch the VLC control window to an arbitrary width, if it meant also the ability to have better seeking available in a future release?"
Yes.

Well, I will leave that for our readers to consider. As always, thank you for your time, and work.
np

Sergei wanted me to include his sincere thanks to the following people who helped him with these changes:
Jerome Duval, Marcus Overhagen, Eric Petit, and Rudolf Cornelissen. Sergei is also heavily involved with the Mozilla and FireFox projects, aiding in their ports to the BeOS platform.