About the new VLC PPA builds…

Yesterday’s links post included a mention of VLC media player version 0.9.2, as well as a few updates about some problems I experienced. I wanted to pass along a little more information I got without having to add too many updates to that post.

First off, it looks like my problem arose because the last time I ran VLC I was using a theme other than the default theme. I spoke with Christoph Korn, the person that packaged the version of LVC that Tombuntu specifies in his instructions, on IRC and he told me that VLC 0.9.2 is using a different directory to store the settings, as well as the installed skins. The old version uses ~/.vlc but the new version uses ~/.config/vlc/ but luckily you can now install themes from the context menu so you shouldn’t have any issues. You should actually check out the changelog for this version as a number of improvements in VLC 0.9, including a new preferences screen and an interface based on QT as a plugin. so GNOME and Xfce users don’t have to worry about kdelibs unless another program you run depends on it.

Christoph also told me that his builds now include support for subtitles thanks to the libass library. What this means is that you can now tweak closed captions, such as to change the color of the text. It was a requested change (not requested by me though) and I’m glad he made the change.

I’m still working my way through the new VLC to see all of the new goodies, but I wanted to pass these things along. Before adding Christoph’s PPA to your sources list completely remove, or purge, your current VLC installation. Also remove the ~/.vlc directory as it is now obsolete. You may need to redo all of your settings, but it should only take you a few minutes at most and you’ll be on your way to enjoying your favorite media in a damned nice player.