Last week, we mentioned that the extremely popular open source video player VLC is getting an entirely new interface in its next 4.0 release, due out later this year. VLC 4.0 is not yet ready for primetime use – but since the program is open source, adventurous users can get nightly builds to take a look at what’s to come. The screenshots we are about to show come from the nightly build released last Friday – 20210212-0431.
Goodbye file opener, hello media jukebox
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On the left, we have the version of VLC that comes with Ubuntu Focal – 3.0.9.2. On the right, we see version 4.0.0-dev, current on February 12th.
Jim Salter
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The old VLC presented users with a blank media player when opened – the new version offers a preview of the file browser in the user’s Videos folder.
Jim Salter
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The old version opens videos directly in the main window – the new version generates a separate playback window, not directly connected to the control interface itself.
Jim Salter
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The Browse tab is intended to provide easy access to media servers on your local network – Plex servers, Playstations and, presumably, other things that don’t start with P.
Jim Salter
When opening version 4.0 dev of VLC, the first change that jumps is an interface change from “file opener” to “media browser”. In older versions of VLC – from its beginning in 2001 until version 3.x being distributed now – it opens in a blank player window, with the iconic VLC traffic cone displayed in the center. Instead, the new VLC opens in a media browser interface, showing thumbnails of all videos present in the user’s Videos folder.
This is the view associated with the Video view displayed along the top menu bar of the new version; also features Music, Browse and Discover. Music offers a similar view in the user’s Music folder, Discover features a web browser looking for shares and streams present on the user’s LAN, and Discover does not appear to have been fully implemented yet.
Another big change is not evident until you open a video. In previous versions of VLC, a single window provided the video content and its controls. Instead, VLC 4.0 generates a new player window, separate from the navigation / control window from which the video was selected.
File system? Which file system? There are only files
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If you want to find a video outside the Videos directory, you’ll need to use the hamburger menu to get to what appears to be a remnant of the old interface.
Jim Salter
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In this view of the Music view, we can see that the VLC 4.0 interface makes it extremely difficult to even find the name of a file that you have already opened.
Jim Salter
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Accessing the controls in full-screen mode is still not much fun – we needed to right-click on the screen for a drop-down list, which technically is not part of the player window.
Jim Salter
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The interface preferences screen has an option, checked by default, to show the controls in full screen mode – this appears to be a remnant of 3.x and does nothing at the moment.
Jim Salter
As long as your videos are all in the local Videos folder, you probably won’t have any difficulties with the new interface – but in its current state, it is not much fun to browse a large number of files in various directories. If you want to leave the Videos directory, you’ll need to click on the hamburger menu in the upper left corner of the playlist and select Media> Open directory. Selecting Open Directory, unfortunately, does not take you to the new directory – instead, it checks all files in and under the new directory you have selected and adds them, whether you like it or not, to the Videos tab itself.
This folder scanning and browser update metaphor is very reminiscent of the “Movies” interface of the Kodi media player – in theory, it entirely abstracts the inconvenience of managing folders and files, giving you a single glass plane to view your entire contents. But it doesn’t fit in many use cases. I don’t necessarily would you like to see all the dumb memes I downloaded and video clips I recorded with my webcam when looking for movies, or vice versa.
The Kodi media player wisely retains a “Files” interface for those who want to see their content organized by folder – but as far as we can tell, VLC 4.0 has not maintained a way to get to the old file-based interface or implemented a new version.
It is also very difficult to find the file name or location of the media that is already in your library. You cannot do this from the library view itself, but while a specific item is playing, you can right-click, select Tools and then select Media Info.
Did we mention it is a work in progress?
The current version of VLC 4.0.0-dev is not suitable for many of the use cases that previous versions of VLC were – but it is still unclear how much of this is by design and how much is because the new version is simply not done. .
VLC 4.0 has been in development for about two years; was first announced at FOSDEM in February 2019, with the first nightly compilations being made available to the public in the same month. VideoLAN Foundation President Jean-Baptiste Kempf told Protocol that 4.0 would be released in 2021 – but there is still no concrete release date.