VLC Video Playback on Ubuntu 4.10 (VirtualBox 7)
In 2004, most people who consumed multimedia on Windows probably used either WMP or iTunes, and exclusively iTunes on MacOS. Now, on Linux, there was a wide array of software that many used. However, the main issues with these media players is that they made use of the multimedia frameworks of there respective OS's. Thus, what would happen if you wanted to play an MP3, but you have to go through the trouble of installing MP3 support for that OS? What about video playback. By the middle 2000's, video playback was no longer an novelty. With the rapid proliferation of high-speed internet, video downloading was the norm. Videos that were generally encoded in DivX or Xvid. That meant extra codecs as well.
Wouldn't be nice if there was a media player that was like the Swiss-Army knife of media players. One that had all the known codecs known to man included so one didn't have to fiddle with various players. Well, VLC was about to make its mark onto the world. Developed by VideoLAN, VLC is a media player/multimedia framework that includes more codecs into the program than anyone can shake a fist at.
Originally developed by students at the École Centrale Paris in 1996, and then rewritten from scratch in 1998 so that it would be released under the GPL license agreement on February 2001. The program would assume the icon identity of an Traffic cone. Those developers must have been massive Kraftwerk fans. Who wouldn't in all honesty? Because of VLC, one can know listen to Autobahn without hunting down codecs for there respective OS.
Over the years, more codecs were added into the program. VLC already supported the most popular formats at the time, like MP3,Divx, Xvid, DVD-Video (MPEG2), among more others, making use of the libavcodec library, used by FFmpeg, another multimedia framework/conversion project. However, VLC also includes its own mixers/demuxers as well. For DVD playback, VLC makes use of the libdvdcss library. Now, because of this (and probably other codecs), VLC is a bit of a controversial project with very questionable legalities in regard to its inclusion on open-source distros. Meaning while everything written in regard to VLC was developed from scratch and is open-source, it implements unauthorized libraries that bypasses DVD encryption, potentially violating encryption laws in multiple countries. As such, many Linux distros do not include it by default. At the time of this writing, it appears that the patent for encrypted DVD playback have expired anyway, thus clearing whatever legal hurdle that VLC might have encounter is very much moot now anyway.
VLC is included on the Ubuntu 4.10 repositories, giving the every person the ability to play any multimedia content they want without the hassle of hunting down codecs. Not only that, VLC was about to take both Windows and MacOS by storm. That is a tell for another day.
VirtualBox 7 is virtualizing a x86 desktop PC with a single core allocated to it. The host processor is a AMD Ryzen 5 5500 6-Core Processor). The VM has 1GB allocated to it, CD-ROM drive, 25GB hard-drive image, a ICH AC'97 audio adapter installed, along with an Intel PRO/1000 MT Ethernet adapter. XFree86 is running at 1024 by 768, 24-bit color depth. Ubuntu 4.10 is installed.
Songs Used:
Late Night Train By
Vans in Japan
YouTube Audio Library
Software Used:
Recorded With OBS Studio
Composed In Kdenlive
Hardware Used:
PC equipped with a
AMD Ryzen 5 5500 CPU
6 Cores Running At 4.2GHz
AMD Radeon RX570 GPU
Windows 11