I have uploaded fresh packages for VLC 3.0.18, targeting Slackware 15.0 and -current.
I realized that it was already nine months ago that I did the last refresh of this mediaplayer package. The prior update also took a long time, 11 months to be precise. There’s not much exciting news about VLC 3.x to report about these days. The developers focus on version 4 of the VLC mediaplayer. The wait for that code to surface as a stable release has been ongoing for several years now. It looks like 4.0.0 is in “beta” but don’t hold your horses.
Apart from the version bump of VLC, I have also updated some of the vlc packages’ internal libraries: bluray, dav1d, ffmpeg, glew, libva, speex, upnp, vdpau, vlx and x265.
I did not consider the Alliance for Open Media’s aom codec yet; aom is a codec for the open and royalty-free AV1 video format, but my package already uses dav1d as an AV1 decoder. If someone needs VLC to be able to encode AV1 video through aom, let me know.
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; a full installation of Slackware covers it all.
Let’s explicitly mention all those libraries that are statically compiled into my vlc package:
- ffmpeg of course
- audio codecs are provided by a52dec, vo-amrwbenc, opencore-amr, libdca, fluidsynth, gsm, lame, libmpcdec, opus, libshout, speex, speexdsp, twolame
- video codecs are provided by dav1d, libdvbpsi, libebml, libmatroska, libmpeg2, libvpx, theora, x626, x264, x265
- subtitle and text rendering: libass, libkate, libtiger, srt
- extension interpreter language: lua
- digital media input: libdv, libbluray, libcddb, libcdio, libdvdnav, libdvdread, libdvdcss (only in the restricted package), libavc1394, libdc1394, libraw1394
- visualisation: goom, projectM
- file access and streaming: asdcplib, libdsm, libssh2, libupnp, live555, microdns, protobuf-cpp
- miscellaneous: fribidi, glew, libva, libvdpau, pcre2, taglib
You’ll notice that I statically compile several libraries into VLC that are also present in regular Slackware (ffmpeg, lame, speex, theora, libvpx and more) but other libraries that are also present in Slackware (mpg123, openjpeg etc) are not included statically. I made an educated guess about the risk of breakage of my vlc package due to incompatible library updates in a Slackware release, and then I added all libraries statically that made me feel safer with regard to robustness of the resulting package. And of course, every library that I consider as mandatory for VLC that is not part of Slackware, is also added to my package statically.
A note on compiling:
When you want to compile VLC 3 yourself, be sure to install java11 and apache-ant or your build will fail.
Where to find the new VLC packages:
- http://slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/vlc/ (only containing the versions that do not violate US patents).
This repository is mirrored at https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/vlc/ and https://us.slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/vlc/.
If you want to play encrypted DVD’s please install the libdvdccss package separately. - https://slackware.nl/people/alien/restricted_slackbuilds/vlc/
(alternative repository containing packages capable of AAC encoding and encrypted DVD playback).
Rsync access is offered by the mirror servers.
The patent-safe packages are found at rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/vlc/ and rsync://us.slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/vlc/ .
The restricted versions that support AAC encoding and encrypted DVD playback are available from 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.
Enjoy! Eric
Thanks Eric
Installed vlc from rsync://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/restricted_slackbuilds/vlc/pkg64/ on Slackware64 15.0 and it runs great.
— kjh
there is something funny going on in current with VLC
Generating VLC plugins cache data…
Package vlc-3.0.18-x86_64-1salien.txz installed.
Package vlc-3.0.17.4-x86_64-1alien upgraded with new package ./vlc-3.0.18-x86_64-1alien.txz.
even the later version this too is showing a blue and multi color screen when opening a video it started awhile back. I posted it somewhere in here on your sight under vlc ,”
I might be misreading your post on it, that everything is now compiled into VLC so no extra deps need to be installed like before?
because it use to work then it started not working doing as I said before and it is not the video because mpv plays it fine.
output off cli
vlc Anne.Rices.Mayfair.Witches.S01E08.720p.AMZN.WEBRip.x264-GalaxyTV.mkv
VLC media player 3.0.18 Vetinari (revision 3.0.13-8-g41878ff4f2)
[00000000020117f0] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use ‘cvlc’ to use vlc without interface.
[00007f9c38c1eeb0] avcodec decoder: Using Mesa Gallium driver 23.0.2 for AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics (raven, LLVM 16.0.1, DRM 3.49, 6.1.24) for hardware decoding
My VLC 3.x packages had some external dependencies during the Slackware 14.2: Qt5 support was not present in that release of Slackware so you would have to install that from my repository.
The VLC package that has been available for Slackware-current since Feb 2020 (when Qt5 was added to -current), and for Slackware 15.0 never had external dependencies. That is 3 years now.
And again, like in your previous post (I assume you never read my reply) I told you that your problem is with the graphics driver on your computer. It is not a VLC issue.
Try running “vlc –avcodec-hw none” to see whether VLC will start properly if you disable hardware decoding.
Hi Eric. Thanks for your time and effort releasing this version. I just upgraded via (slackpkg+), working ok. Francisco
Awesome, thanks!