This latest version now also fully maintains Chromecast streaming, a feature first represented with back in 2016. While VLC is open source, this part of it isn’t Tom’s Hardware reports that VideoLAN told it “used Google’s official closed-source SDK to build out the innovation, which stops it from publishing the source.”
Other major calculated features include 3D audio support, audio passthrough for HD audio codecs, and assistance for browsing NAS drives. As always, a bunch of new codecs is supported too.
Started as an educational project in 1996, VLC has grown one of the most well-supported free video players across programs. Its construction is directed by VideoLAN, a nonprofit organization based in France, with missionaries working on it from throughout the world.
This major new account of the software has been under construction since June of 2016.
Supported platforms cover Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and Linux however, the Linux variant is not yet publicly available. For all but the last of those, it’s currently possible to download for free.
Video Lan has released a statement:
Please note that Chromecast assistance in VLC 3.0 is fully open-source for all programs! That’s the reason why it took us so long to ship as we fully reverse-engineered the entire thing. The closed-source element by Google can’t be used for legal reasons in VLC, isn’t compatible with Macs, Linux, and Windows and supports a very short set of codecs only. With our code, you can play basically anything VLC can decode on your Chromecast as we transcode on-the-fly if needed.
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