VLC Will Get a New UI This Year With 4.0 Launch

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: News website Protocol ran an extensive piece on the history and status of the popular open source video player VLC, and the story includes new details about the next major version of the software. Among other things, VLC 4.0 will bring a complete user interface overhaul. "We modified the interface to be a bit more modern," VideoLAN foundation President Jean-Baptiste Kempf told the publication. Kempf had previously shown some version of a new interface about two years ago, but it's unclear at this point how much that one resembles the one the team plans to introduce with VLC 4.0. While the article doesn't list every change coming, it does outline a couple other possible directions and priorities for VLC. The VideoLAN foundation has not generally sought ways to monetize VLC, but some source of funding or revenue could help ensure long-term support for the project. To that end, Kempf said VideoLAN is exploring a Plex-like business model, with ad-supported free video streams available in the player. "That is something that could work for VLC," he explained. But it was clear nothing is final on that front yet. VLC will also ultimately get support the AV1 and AV2 codecs; AV1 is gaining a great deal of traction for streaming services and other video products these days. Finally, VideoLAN is developing a new way to run VLC on the Web, using Webassembly and JavaScript. VLC 4.0 is expected "in the coming months," but we don't know any more than that at this stage.

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