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Last week, we mentioned that the ever-popular open-source video player VLC will be getting a whole new interface in its upcoming version 4.0, which is expected to debut later this year. VLC 4.0 isn’t ready for prime-time use just yet – but because the program is open source, adventurous users can grab nightly versions of it to take a peek at what’s to come. The screenshots we’re about to show are from the nightly version released last Friday – 20210212-0431.
Goodbye file opener, hello multimedia jukebox
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On the left we have the version of VLC that came with Ubuntu Focal – 3.0.9.2. On the right we see version 4.0.0-dev, updated as of February 12.
Jim salter
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The old VLC presented users with a blank media player when opened – the new version gives you a file browser view in the user’s Videos folder.
Jim salter
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The old version opens videos directly in the main window – the new version generates a separate playback window, not directly connected to the control interface itself.
Jim salter
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The Browse tab is meant to give easy access to media servers on your local network – Plex servers, Playstations, and possibly other things that don’t start with P.
Jim salter
When opening VLC development version 4.0, the first change that pops is an interface change from “file opener” to “media browser”. In older versions of VLC – from its debut in 2001 through to version 3.x currently being distributed – it opens to an empty player window, with VLC’s iconic traffic cone displayed in the center. The new VLC instead opens to a media browser interface, showing thumbnails of all of the videos in the user’s Videos folder.
This is the view associated with the Video view displayed along the top menu bar of the new version; it also presents Music, Browse and Discover. Music offers a similar view in the user’s Music folder, Discover presents a network browser looking for shares and streams present on the user’s LAN, and Discover does not appear to have been fully implemented yet.
Another major change isn’t obvious until you open a video. In older versions of VLC, a single window provided both video content and its controls. VLC 4.0 instead generates a new player window, separate from the browse / control window from which the video was selected.
File system? What file system? There are only files
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If you want to find a video outside of your Videos directory, you’ll have to use the hamburger menu to access what looks like a holdover from the old interface.
Jim salter
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In this preview of the Music view, we can see that the interface of VLC 4.0 makes it extremely difficult even to find the filename of a file that you have already opened.
Jim salter
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Accessing the controls in full screen mode isn’t much fun yet – we had to right-click on the screen for a drop-down, which technically isn’t part of the player window at all.
Jim salter
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The UI preferences screen has an option, checked by default, to show controls in full screen mode – this appears to be a holdover from 3.x and does nothing at this time.
Jim salter
As long as your videos are all in your local Videos folder, you probably won’t have any issues with the new interface, but in its current state, browsing a lot of files in multiple directories isn’t much fun. If you don’t go out of your Videos directory, you’ll need to click on the hamburger menu at the top left of the playlist and select Media> Open Directory. Selecting Open Directory, unfortunately, doesn’t take you to the new directory – instead, it scans all the files both inside and under the new directory you select and reluctantly adds them all. will, on the Videos tab itself.
This metaphor of scanning folders and updating the browser is strongly reminiscent of the Kodi media player’s “Movies” interface – in theory, it removes the inconvenience of managing folders and files entirely, giving you one shot. glass in which to view all your content. But that’s not suitable for too many use cases – I’m not necessarily want to to see all the silly memes I downloaded and video clips I recorded with my webcam while searching for movies, or vice versa.
The Kodi media player wisely retains a “Files” interface for those who want to see their content organized by folder – but as far as we can tell, VLC 4.0 has neither retained a way to access the old interface based on files, nor implemented a new version.
It is also quite difficult to find the filename or location of the media that is already in your library. You can’t do this at all from the library view itself, but while playing a particular item, you can right-click on it, select Tools, and then select File Info. media.
Did we mention that this is a work in progress?
The current version of VLC 4.0.0-dev is not suitable for most of the use cases of earlier versions of VLC – but it is not yet clear how much this is by design and how much this is because the new version not yet done. .
VLC 4.0 has been in development for about two years now; it was first announced at FOSDEM in February 2019, with the nightly versions becoming available to the public the same month. VideoLAN Foundation President Jean-Baptiste Kempf told Protocol that version 4.0 will be released sometime in 2021, but there is still no concrete release date.
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