Dominique a.k.a. DimStar (Dim*)

Compiz 0.9.0 submitted to Factory

As you already know, Compiz 0.9.0 has been released a while back. Due to the freeze of Factory, the repositories were not updated and also, for 11.3, this version of Compiz would have been too immature.

But now as Factory is open again and we all have our systems updated to openSUSE 11.3, we’re ready to break Factory again (hopefully not). I just submitted the Compiz 0.9.0 stack to X11:Compiz and openSUSE:Factory, where they will hopefully land soon.

Publishing of X11:Compiz has been disabled for all distributions except openSUSE:Factory, meaning that the last 0.8.6 packages will remain there for all others. This mainly to give you the chance to change your repo configuration to use X11:Compiz:Compiz-0.8, which will be kept around to maintain the 0.8 bugfix tree packages.

Looking forward to all the bug reports that will be flying by.

VLC 1.1.1 released

Today, the VideoLAN project released version 1.1.1 of the infamous Video Player we all learned to love. Version 1.1.1 is a bug-fix release, which does not get a big boost of new features, but yet brings you forward.

The ChangeLog for this version reads (trimmed, removed Mac and Windows items here):

libVLC:
* New capabilities for libVLC:
* Adjust video filter control: libvlc_adjust_Enable,
libvlc_adjust_Contrast, libvlc_adjust_Brightness, libvlc_adjust_Hue,
libvlc_adjust_Saturation, libvlc_adjust_Gamma
* libvlc_media_player_set_pause() can force the pause state, whereas
libvlc_media_player_pause() would only toggle it.
* libvlc_set_user_agent() configures the “user agent” strings used for some
protocols (HTTP, PulseAudio…). This replaces the –http-user-agent and
the former –user-agent libvlc_new() parameters.
* libvlc_video_set_callbacks() and libvlc_video_set_format() allow grabbing
video frames from a chosen memory location in real-time. This replace the
ugly –vmem-* libvlc_new() parameters in previous versions.
See http://wiki.videolan.org/LibVLC_SampleCode_SDL as an example.
* libvlc_audio_get_delay() and libvlc_audio_set_delay() configure the delay
between audio and video/subpictures for the current input.
* Various fixes and crash preventions, especially when video functions were
called early

Decoders/Demuxers:
* Fix performance issues with GPU decoding using DxVA2 using ATI graphic cards
You NEED ATI Catalyst 10.7
* Fix :program selection in TS and DVB-T
* Fixes and improvements for MKV, Avformat and Avcodec modules
* Fix mod (.xm, .s3m, .it) files support on Windows and Mac builds

Stream output:
* Fix h264 streaming in ts

Interfaces:
* Qt: fix preferences, hotkeys, messages and some fulscreen behaviour
* Skins: support for mousewheel in fullscreen, fix radialsliders
* Http: fix fullscreen toggle

Linux:
* Fix pulse closing
* VAAPI small improvements, notably for extraction mode selection

Translations
* Update translations for Spanish, Polish, German, Sinhala, Hungarian, Khmer,
Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Hebrew, Slovak, Galician

Packages for your favorite openSUSE version are in the repositories as usual (built for openSUSE 11.0 up to 11.3 plus also Factory, which at this time is not yet too different from 11.3 of course).
For full instructions on how to install VLC, see http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-suse.html; in case you already have an older version installed, use your package manager of choice (zypper, yast) to update your current installation.