OStatic

In July, we covered the much updated version 1.0 of VLC Media Player. You can download a new version 1.0.1 for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux here, and if you don't already use it, it's fantastic. I find that it consistently plays video file formats that other players have problems with, and there is much more under the hood in this open source media player than many people realize. For example, you can use it to broadcast your own video content, you can use it as a video transcoder for converting video file formats, and you can listen to and manage podcasts with it. VideoLAN, which makes VLC Media Player, reports that version 1.0 has already hit 14 million downloads.

VLC Media Player is so powerful, though, that it could use better documentation (As I write this, the wiki for VLC Media Player's documentation is down altogether). In this post, I'll round up four good tutorial resources that can introduce you to some of the many useful VLC Media Player features that may not be immediately apparent.

Among open source media center applications for managing video, music and other entertainment content, Boxee has emerged as a clear leader. This week the company announced that it has received a $6 million injection of venture capital funding, led by Boston-based General Catalyst with participation by prior investors Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures.

The investment brings Boxee's total funding to $10 million, obtained in under a year. As Boxee officials noted in their announcement of the funding: Boxee today is mostly serving a tech-savvy audience ? those who feel comfortable connecting a computer to a TV. For example, Boxee is very popular with Apple TV users, who manage media with it, and are able to watch video content on big-screen TVs. So what lies ahead for it, and how can it gain appeal beyond a tech-savvy audience?

Researchers and developers at the University of California, Berkeley are working on open source software to help distribute audio and video files of classroom lectures to media services like iTunes and YouTube. The university already publishes full-length videos of classroom sessions on YouTube, but recording, editing, and posting these videos is an costly undertaking. Now, new grant money will pay those expenses and help expand video distribution worldwide.

Known as the Opencast Matterhorn project, an international team of developers from universities in Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and the UK will draw from a coffer of $1.3 million to create the software platform that's scheduled to launch next summer.

Google's announcement yesterday that it is acquiring video compression company On2 Technologies for $106.5 million may appear to be just another acquisition in a buyer's market, but there is a strong chance that it could dramatically affect video standards online. Because of the enormous share of online video viewing that Google's YouTube commands, the company can swing a bigger stick in setting online video standards than many people realize, and the company has already been frustrated by the refusal of leading browser makers to agree on a central, shared codec to mutually support.

Ars Technica suggests that the On2 acquisition will have a big impact on web video standards, and The Register comes right out and speculates that Google will quickly open source On2's video compression codecs. I lean toward the latter scenario.