Title: VideoLAN: 15 Years of Cône-tributions to Open Source Multimedia Overview of VideoLAN organization and the genesis of the most popular multimedia player. Current state of VLC Media Player for the next 4.0 release.

1. VideoLAN
15 years of cône-tributions to open
source multimedia
François Cartegnie

2. That guy speaking
Joined VideoLAN in 2009
VLC developer
From UI to [De]mux,
decoders, adaptive, ...

3. VideoLAN ?

4. VideoLAN story
1995
●
Ecole Centrale Paris
●
Engineering school students
●
Playing Doom
●
Token Ring Network
NO WAY !

5. VideoLAN story
●
Find a way to fund new network
●
Benefit for students
●
Satellite Dish
●
Network VOD ?
●
Deal set with 3-Com and Bouygues
●
"Network 2000" as Proof of Concept

6. Proof of concept
1995 – 96
●
«Network 2000»
streaming client
Project reboot
1998
●
Open-Source
●
Modular
●
Cross-Platform
●
Video LAN Server
●
Video LAN Client
The rise
2001 - 2002
●
GPL v2
●
Codecs packs
●
Peer to Peer
●
Incomplete files
●
Many projects
VideoLAN story

7. VideoLAN « asso »
2009
●
Non Profit Organization
●
Free Software
●
Open Source Multimedia software
●
French
– No software patents
– No patent licensing
– Right to interoperability

8. VideoLAN
●
Core of OSS Multimedia Community
●
60 members
●
Donations
– Gears and servers
– Travel
– Legal
– Funding
●
VideoLAN Dev Days

9. VideoLAN Dev Days 2018
Iliad HQ, Paris

10. VideoLAN Dev Days 19
November 9 - 10th
Tokyo
https://www.videolan.org/videolan/events/vdd19/
vai ser ótimo !

11. Under VideoLAN's umbrella
VLC
DVBlast, Multicat (DVB streaming)
libdvdcss (DVD CSS decryption)
libdts, libdca (DTS decoding)
libdvbpsi (MPEG-TS PSI encoding/decoding)
libdvbcsa (DVB encryption decoding)
libbluray, libaacs (BluRay playback)
x262, x264, x265
Dav1d(AV1decoder)

12. AOM Member
●
2017
●
Specification process
●
open and royalty-free
video codec (AV1)
●
Amazon, ARM, Cisco,
Google, IBM, Intel,
Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix
and NVIDIA.

13. Opening Multimedia ?

14. Opening Multimedia
●
Specification
– Open
– Costly
– NDA
●
Sampling
●
Other challenges
– Patents
– Licensing
– DRM

15. DVD Format Book
"To obtain DVD Books, your company needs to sign the Non-
Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with DVD FLLC to become a Book
subscriber."
"Book subscribers should not disclose any technical
information, trade secret and know-how in the DVD Book to any
third parties under the NDA. "
"First Copy with execution of NDA: JPY550,000"
http://www.dvdfllc.co.jp/format/f_nosbsc.html

16. Blu-ray Spec Study License
"Specification Books will be mailed (...) upon receipt of (...), the
executed Blu-ray DiscTM Specification Information
Agreement"
"Authorized purpose here is strictly limited to internal use only
and Recipient has no right to discuss the Blu-ray Disc
Standard Specifications with any third party."
"Term : 1 year"
"US$ 2,500- for 1st Book (in every format)"
https://www.blu-raydisc.info/license-app/ia-app.php

17. Closed specs
●
Reverse engineering
●
Reverse engineering
●
Reverse engineering
●
NDA & licensing
– Direct Leaks
– Open Source !

18. Popular Projects

19. DVD playback for everyone
●
libdvdread (2000)
– Media abstraction API
– Event loop
●
libdvdnav
– Virtual machine implementation
– Navigation, angle, menus
●
libdvdcss
– to really own your stuff

20. Blu-Ray playback
●
libbluray
– Reverse engineering by Doom9
– Media abstraction, Navigation, Menus
– Java Virtual Machine (BD-J)
●
libaacs and libbdplus
– Protection stripping..
– "Touchy"

21. x264
●
Leading H.264
encoder
●
8, 9 and 10 bit depths
●
Blu-ray authoring
●
Almost everywhere
●
Licensing available

22. x265
●
HEVC/H.265 encoder by
Multicoreware
●
Inherits x264
algorithms
●
x264 licensed

23. Dav1d
●
Sponsored by Mozilla
●
Fastest AV1 decoder
●
Heavily threaded
●
> 50% Assembly
●
Firefox, Chrome, ...

24. VLC Media Player

25. VLC Media Player
●
Video LAN Client (few slides ago)
●
Most popular Video Player
●
900K lines of code
●
400 modules
●
90 libraries
●
« Plays Everything »

26. VLC

28. 1.000.000downloads per day
175.000.0003.x downloads (estimated)
3.200.000.000+downloads since the early days
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/stats/downloads.html

29. VLC Contributors
●
Core Team 5~10 people
●
800 over the lifetime
●
150 per year
●
Code gives Power

30. Collaboration
●
"Kernel way"
– Git patch
– Mailing List reviews
– Not user friendly
●
Trac Bugtracker
●
Forum Support

31. Collaboration
●
Lower the entry
barrier
●
Docker bootstrap
●
Moving to Gitlab
●
On our own Infra !

32. License
●
GPLv2
– Violations
– License concerns
●
SDK compatibility
●
Apache v2
●
App stores & GPLv3
●
Professional market and GPL contamination
●
LGPLv2.1 (Mostly)

33. All good ?
●
More violations
– GPLv2 + Android SDK (Apache)
●
GPLv3
– App stores monetization
●
At least benefits to good players

34. LibVLC Today
●
Successful business use cases
●
Set Top Boxes
●
VOD
●
Streaming applications
●
Forensics
●
In-Flight Entertainment

35. 4.0 W.I.P.

36. VLC 4.0
●
Otto chriek
●
Architecture changes
●
Bye to old platforms
●
Ready for VR and 3D
●
8K and HDR

37. VLC 4.0
●
New playlist
●
New media library
●
New hierarchical clock
●
New video output
●
Meson build system

38. OMG they killed UI !

41. Control CVE entries
●
2019-13615
●
« critical » … and invalid
●
Gizmodo's clickbait advice relayed
everywhere
– 2 days of counter-fire
●
DoS through « CVE » list based
security tools
– Mandatory new release
Being our own
CVE Numbering Authority !

42. 4.0++

43. Low latency
●
Current trend
●
Realtime Live streaming
●
Hard to achieve
●
3 frames / 60 ms (VideoLabs)

44. Hardening
●
App vs Modules
sandboxing
●
Safe Languages ?
– Rust
●
Heavy

45. VLC.js
●
Web plugins are dead
●
Zero Install
●
Always up-to-date
●
Kinda works
https://code.videolan.org/jbk/vlc.js
●
Slow but evolving fast

46. Thanks for listening !
Questions ?
fcartegnie@videolan.org