AfterDawn: News

VLC for Android coming next month?

According to VLC developer Rémi Duraffort, the long-awaited VLC for Android could be coming next month, in beta form.

Duraffort says "most of the components are working but we must work to make them fit together."



VLC for Android was initially expected in January, but lead VLC developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf said earlier this year that it has been "a challenge" to move VLC's core C++ code into Java, which is used on Android.

Adds the developer (via Om)

Having to create an application in Java that will load a C library in order to run VLC code is part of the issues we have. Moreover, most API to manage graphics (OpenGL) or audio can only be accessed from Java which mean that we decode audio and video in C but then give the images and audio samples to Java to be able to render them.

Android 2.3 has made it easier to run native C++ code, but the developer says "VLC for Android will work for every Android version since 1.5," meaning they will continue to port the code.

VLC for Android will even work with 3.0 Honeycomb, although a fully tablet-optimized version will be released after the smartphone app.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 21 Mar 2011 19:24

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• 10 comments

• mike.m

  Anyone know if it will play mkv's? Time to put those dual-core phones to use.

  21.3.2011 19:48 #1

• A5J4DX

  cant wait to replace vplayer with vlc :D
  

  21.3.2011 19:56 #2

• lissenup2

  I'm looking forward to putting this on my new MyTouch 4G.

  21.3.2011 22:00 #3

• KillerBug

  Awesome...I love VLC in spite of some of the major issues that never get fixed...you gotta love an app that will play files when you don't have codecs installed, and when the file itself is so broken that it causes windows media player to crash hard. I hope it has ISO support so I can just copy DVD images over to my phone to watch them.
  

  
  

  21.3.2011 23:25 #4

• o0cynix0o

  Originally posted by KillerBug: I hope it has ISO support so I can just copy DVD images over to my phone to watch them. Now that would be something.
  

  “Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this... and attaining enlightenment is the least of your problems.”
  –Zen Judaism by Someone Clever

  23.3.2011 00:34 #5

• plazma247

  Ohhhh how good is this, so long ive waited soooo long, the made the mistake of porting to the ibone first, what a mistake that was.
  
  Anyway i this is the best think to happen to android since the announcement of honeycomb.

  23.3.2011 07:51 #6

• Bozobub

  Originally posted by o0cynix0o: Originally posted by KillerBug: I hope it has ISO support so I can just copy DVD images over to my phone to watch them. Now that would be something. Ouch! Better have a 32 GB SD card >.> ...

  23.3.2011 14:11 #7

• plazma247

  Lol they are actually pretty cheap heres a class 2 for £15 or a class 4 for £45 But if i remember you need to have a min of a class 4 to keep up with 1080p video data rate, not that your probably gona bash that phone, depends on what you want the storage for i guess :) <-- lol remembered wrong see below CLASS=MB/s Speed.

  23.3.2011 14:18 #8

• Bozobub

  Well, considering you can use these phones as HD video players (either via cable or on some, DLNA or other wireless), it's probably good to have as fast an microSD card as you can support...

  23.3.2011 15:20 #9

• plazma247

  Yeah but,
  
  Class 0 cards do not specify performance, which includes all legacy cards prior to class specifications.
  Class 2, 2 MB/s, slowest for SDHC cards.
  Class 4, 4 MB/s.
  Class 6, 6 MB/s.
  Class 10, 10 MB/s.
  
  Personally i could carry round a brick phone if i could hard wire a 300MB/s SSD drive into it :)
  
  Found a 32GB Class 10 for £50 16GB were under half at £17
  
  :) hell those older class dont go cheap do that lol.

  23.3.2011 15:28 #10