VLC

An open source media player project that the creator kept free and ad-free despite significant financial offers.

“So as the legend goes, JB, you, uh, repeatedly turned down millions of dollars to, uh, keep VLC open source free for everyone without ads. So take me through the reasoning behind that decision of leaving millions of dollars on the table.”

The open-source media player software that the speakers emphasize is secure, private, and free of backdoors.

“There is no code that gets into VLC that we don't control. And the way we compile VLC, you would call me completely paranoid. LikeWe compile on boxes that are offline where we start by compiling the compiler. We do everything offline on, on, on places that hav…”

A media player and framework that is already incorporating plugins for haptic and XR data.

“And, and so of course, like we have a plugin which is not in the normal version of VLC-”

A popular media player designed to handle damaged files and network streams by not trusting inputs.

“This is why VLC is popular. Um, but the reason is because actually VLC was, is just a client of a streaming solution called VideoLAN from, from, from very long time ago, from the late '90s. And when you're playing video which are on UDP, right, in network, the…”

A legendary open source media player that has been downloaded over six billion times.

“The following is a conversation all about FFmpeg and VLC with Jean-Baptiste Kempf and Kieran Cunha. FFmpeg is an open source software system that is the invisible backbone behind YouTube, Netflix, Chrome, VLC, Discord, and basically every platform that touches…”

A media player software capable of opening almost any file format and recording from VHS tapes.

“So the legend goes VLC can open everything. What's the weirdest thing that you know that it can open?”

A media player software discussed in the context of its longevity and potential adaptation to future interfaces.

“VLC, maybe.”

A widely used media player that exemplifies the impact of individual passion projects.

“portal to download invoices for your PG&E. Wow, great. Like, so many w- jobs are like that. You're not going to, to tell that to your grandma. But if you go to see your grandma and say, "I do this so that you can play video on your laptop," they understand. An…”

Used for streaming services and as a source of learning for broadcast real-time synchronization and clock drift management.

“Yes. And what we do is a bit different from, and everyone else, is that we take only one socket, one connection, which is a quick, uh, protocol based on UDP, um, which is interesting because it's done for low latency. It doesn't have two of the, what we call t…”

Jean-Baptiste Kempf notes that VLC is primarily licensed under GPL or LGPL and mentions the difficulty of re-licensing the project.

“Yes. So in those type of permissive license, some you'd need to say if you use it, which is called attribution, and some you don't. And then there is a, the other part of license which are copyleft, where you need to give back to the community your modificatio…”

Used as an example of a video player that processes streams into pixels and sound.

“Uh, can we just lay out some of the basics to, to help people understand what's involved in all of this? So when we press play on a video player like VLC, what happens? What... How does it go from the, the file or the stream to the pixels on the screen and the…”