Written by Kaylee Wood | Last updated: March 18, 2021
At FOSDEM 2019, the VLC developer revealed some new details about the VLC 4.0. Accordingly, VLC 4.0 will be the next big release of VLC media player that is set to bring a whole host of new features, like new UI, redesigned input/output architecture and support for VR, AirPlay, 3D, AV1, etc. If you want to grasp more information and learn how to download VLC 4.0, this guide may help you.
Notice: The preview version of VLC media player 4.0 is already available to download at https://nightlies.videolan.org/build/, but keep in mind it is a development build especially for testors that may have bugs or missing features.
VLC 4.0's support for VR, AV1 codec, AirPlay and 3D is just in the initial stage, but 5KPlayer has been full-fledged for 3D audio/AV1 video playback and AirPlay mirroring for a very long time. Besides, 5KPlayer has successfully become a professional 360-degree video player to play 360° videos. So, choose it if VLC player 4.0 is not that satisfactory.
The upcoming VLC 4.0 will have a brand-new look and a bunch of new features and enhancements. Here, we'd like to list all of the important details to help you make the decision to download VLC media player 4.0.
1. More Modern Design: Many people think that the user interface of VLC media player is old-fashioned and even ugly, though VLC is much more popular than other media players out the market. Therefore, VLC 4.0 will try to be beautiful and modern by adding the ever-trending dark mode and some transparency elements, and redesigning the performance of icons and buttons.
2. New User Interface: When opening up the developer version of VLC 4.0, you will see a "media browser" but not a "file opener", with thumbnails of all videos showing in the user's Videos folder. You can also see Music, Browse and Discover sections. BTW, VLC 4.0 instead spawns a new player window, separate from the browsing/control window from which the video was selected.
3. VLC Media Player 4.0 Will Bring a New Media Library: The media library is used on Android and now is coming to desktop and iOS platforms. With the new media library, it is quite easier to browse and find a media to play, as well as manage the media files more conveniently.
4. VR Support: VR video is a smash hit nowadays as well as in the future, so the best media player would not drop this eye-catching feature. VLC 4.0 will be a real and professional VR video player for Windows, Mac and Linux that you can experience the immersive and interactive scenes with HTC Vive, PSVR, Oculus Rift, Oclulus GO and range of Microsoft headsets much more easily than before.
5. UPnP Rendering and AirPlay Output: VLC is already an UPnP/DLNA player that allows for video music playback on computer from multiple DLNA servers, but the reinforced UPnP rendering feature of VLC 4.0 will make that experience more pleasing among DLNA-certified devices. And the newly-added AirPlay feature will enable communications between VLC media player and Apple devices easily, so that you can AirPlay video music from iOS to Mac/PC or stream computer media to Apple TV wirelessly.
6. What Else? It is said that VLC media player 4.0 will bring GNOME and KDE adaptations for Linux, as well as support for Wayland, HEIF, Dash/WebM, TTML images, AV1 and AV2 codecs, and WebVTT encoding. A Web version is also in the works. VideoLAN foundation President Jean-Baptiste Kempf also told that VideoLAN is exploring a Plex-like business model for VLC player by providing ad-supported free video streams.
Besides the improvement of UPnP rendering, VLC 4.0 helps play 360 degree videos and 3D audio in a much more fluent way. You can now move your mouse to drag your 360 videos in all directions to view details, and enjoy the range of 3D audio technologies with earphones without quality loss. The redesigned input manager will allows for gapless audio playback to make the playlist go hand in hand. And the new output option renders better management and recycling, smarter Hardware acceleration, smoother HDR playback, gapless VLC Chromecast streaming, etc. You can also play from Explorer, Nautilus, Dolphin and Finder to launch VLC media player 4.0. What's more, the improved clock system benefits the synchronization, improves frame accuracy and eliminates resampling.
Since the official release time of VLC 4.0 is not announced yet, it is impossible for us to know the bugs. However, it is confirmed that VLC 4.0 will drop the support for older operating systems and only running on Windows 7, macOS 10.10, Android 4.2, iOS 9 and later.
We will update this article once VLC 4.0 shows bugs and provide the corresponding solutions if needed.
Source: https://www.neowin.net/news/vlc-40-to-drop-support-for-older-platforms-while-adding-new-ui-and-gapless-playback/
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