jxself.org

VLC, VP9, Opus & WebVTT

Sun, 26 Jul 2015

I've begun maintaining an APT repository for VLC.

I started this APT repository to scratch a personal itch: I wanted to be able to play WebM files with the VP9 video codec and Opus audio codec and embdedded WebVTT subtitles on Trisquel 7 ("Belenos".) Looking in to the matter, I found that Belenos had new-enough versions of most everything needed already, except for VLC. VLC itself wasn't quite there yet either and didn't include support for embedded WebVTT subtitles, which is the subtitle format used in WebM files. I made a feature request to add that support, which was then added for VLC 3.0. I applied that diff to the then-current VLC 2.2.1. This repository provides that missing component by having the latest version of VLC, with the backported patch for WebVTT subtitles.

Using the logic that if it took more than 3 minutes to make it's worth sharing I've made this APT repository available to the public.

I hope that this repository will help the adoption of VP9 and Opus by increasing the number of people that are able to play it.