My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

VideoLAN releases VLC 3.0.7

largeVLCThe new 3.0.7 release for the VideoLAN multimedia player VLC was tagged in git almost two weeks ago but it took until today to find official tarballs on their web site. By the looks of the git log I can only assume that the VideoLAN developers needed to fix some annoying post-release bugs first.
The ChangeLog documents that the focus of the developers is mostly on the Android, MacOS and Windows platforms, presumably because that is where most of the issues are found? Also – through sponsoring by the European Commission’s EU-FOSSA2 program – more than 35 security bugs were fixed.
So I built new ‘vlc‘ packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current yesterday and uploaded them to my repository. Between the previous 3.0.6 and this 3.0.7 release I u
pdated some of the packages’ internal libraries: bluray, dav1d, dvdnav, ebml, matroska. If you want to know what you can expect from the VLC 3.x releases (as opposed to the 2.x releases which took way too many years to get obsoleted) you can read this older article on my blog.

A note about dependencies for the new package:

My Slackware packages for VLC are mostly self-contained with all of the supporting libraries compiled into the package. This makes for a minimal dependency on external libraries/packages. But there are some caveats with the new release: most importantly, its interface has switched from Qt4 to Qt5.
While Slackware contains a ‘qt4’ package, it does not contain ‘qt5’ and therefore, the vlc-3.x package introduces some new external dependencies, all related to the Qt5 GUI: SDL_sound, OpenAL, libxkbcommon, qt5. Hopefully Qt5 will get added to Slackware-current sometime in the future.
On Slackware 14.2, two more packages are needed – they have already been incorporated into Slackware-current: libinput and libwacom .

A note on compiling:

When you want to compile VLC 3 yourself, be sure to install java8 and apache-ant or your build will fail.
If you are running Slackware 14.2 you will additionally need the following four packages (required to compile the ‘dav1d‘ decoder): meson, ninja, python3, python3-setuptools .

Where to find the new VLC packages:

Rsync access is offered by the mirror server: rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/restricted_slackbuilds/vlc/ .

For BluRay support, read a previous article for hints about the aacs keys that you’ll need.

My usual warning about patents: versions that can not only DEcode but also ENcode AAC audio can be found in my alternative repository where I keep the packages containing code that might violate stupid US software patents.

14 Comments

  1. Antoine

    Many thanks for the updates, Eric.
    YouTube videos stopped working in Firefox after I updated Slackware -current today, including VLC 3.0.7 from your restricted repo. (I still get sound, and I can see videos elsewhere e.g. directly on Patreon’s web site.)
    I tried installing SDL_sound and OpenAL that you mention above (I already had libxkbcommon and qt5) but it didn’t help.
    Do we need a new npapi-vlc package? The newest one I see dates back to 2019-01-12.
    The update also included a new kernel and firmware, could that be the issue?

  2. Andrew McGlashan

    RESPECT USER PRIVACY

    Unblock access to Tor network users please.

  3. alienbob

    Hi Antoine

    I am running the latest Slackware64-current here, and my VLC 3.0.7 package still works, and Firefox still plays Youtub videos. I also tried pasting a Youtube URL directly into VLC’s “play network stream” and that plays the video just fine (audio and video).
    There was a ‘mesa’ update in the latest batch. Are you using the proprietary NVIDIA or AMD drivers? Then you may have to re-install those.

  4. alienbob

    Andrew, writing in all capitals to convince me of something is just plain annoying.
    I am not blocking Tor consciously. Why do you think I am blocking your access? Do you get an error?
    I am blocking several IP ranges which have been used by trolls to attack or pollute my blog. Are you one of those trolls?

  5. Antoine

    Hello Eric,
    thanks for checking on your side.
    I just use the “Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 630” embedded video card so no AMD or NVIDIA drivers.

    Turns out my normal user’s .mozilla/firefox directory somehow coincidentally got corrupted. I deleted it and now YouTube videos play normally in Firefox.
    Now I just need to restore it bit by bit to find out what went wrong.

  6. alienbob

    Antoine, thanks for reporting back about the cause of your issue.

  7. gauchao

    Hi Eric. Thank you. Everything is running smoothly under Slackware 64 14.2.

  8. Jen

    Working great, here. New design on the blog? Looks great!

  9. Georgi

    Hello,
    Anyone else having issue with UPnP/DLNA ?
    I get
    “`[00007f3c9c9e1ed0] upnp services discovery: Initializing libupnp on \’default\’ interface
    [00007f3c9c9e1ed0] upnp services discovery error: Initialization failed: UPNP_E_OUTOF_SOCKET
    [00007f3c9c9e1ed0] main services discovery error: no suitable services discovery module“`
    Maybe it is me but wanna make sure.
    Something I found is https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/20091
    Dosnt seem like the same issue, but in the comment they state that upnp wont work with version of libupnp between 1.6.25 and 1.8.3.
    Tbh i kind of doubt that is the case , but seems worth mentioning.

  10. alienbob

    I tested my latest vlc-3.0.7 package on Slackware64-14.2 Georgi.
    In the playlist I selected UPnP. I got a listing of the DLNA servers in my LAN. I clicked one (Universal Media Server) and could click through the directories to a movie which I double-clicked. It started playing in VLC.
    So, no issue here.

  11. Georgi

    Thanks for the quick response.
    So it is differently something on my side … keep on digging it is then 😀

  12. Skaendo

    Hey Eric,

    Could you do me a favor next time you build VLC and check if asdcplib is being picked up?

    I am building my own VLC and I am using your SlackBuild for a guide (and patches/fixes) except I’m using “system libs” and not building them in and asdcplib is not being picked up. Not that I have a need for it but thought that you might want to check on it in your package.

    I have found that it really needs a asdcplib.pc, but I cannot figure it out. I have it to the point where configure will see it, but will not pick it up while compiling.

    Thanks,
    Ed

    • alienbob

      Hi Ed,

      I searched the build logs of vlc-3.0.7 and indeed VLC does not find the asdcp library.
      I have therefore updated my vlc.SlackBuild script with a .pc file for asdcplib and will see if that helps when I compile vlc-3.0.8 soon-ish.

      • Skaendo

        Thanks Eric

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