Good news to all VLC users out there. VideoLAN, the developers of the open source media player has just released VLC 2.0 a.k.a. Twoflower. VLC 2.0 promises faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware with greater flexibility in handling a wider range of formats. Another major update is HD and 10bits codecs, Twoflower also brings a new rendering pipeline that delivers new video filters for superior quality and better improved subtitles. What's more is that it's been revamped with a new interface as well as several hundred bug fixes, thanks to VideoLan's more than 160 dedicated volunteers.

New video features include a rewritten video ouput core and modules for subpicture blending in GPU, shader support in OpenGL for 10bits colorspace conversion, improved video output for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS, and anti-flickering and deinterlacing filters. Twoflower's audio system has been improved with a new set of resamplers for excellent audio quality and a new range of compressor and karaoke filters. VLC's audio core is now simplified for faster processing with new audio outputs for OS/2, Android and iOS.

You will also love Twoflower's improved formats. It now features multi-threaded decoding for H.264, MPEG-4/Xvid and WebM as well support for 10bits codecs, as mentioned before. Other notable features on the format include changes in RealVideo and Real Format support and CrystalHD cards and Android OpenMAX. As far as input and devices are concerned, VLC 2.0 is currently experimenting and working out the support for BluRay discs. Now there's also support for SDI capture cards, QTKit devices and HLS and DASH streaming protocols.

Mac users will love VLC 2.0 even more because of its new single window interface that has 2 colors (Lion Grey and QTX Black). VLC is also now improved with better Lion integration and support for all QTKit devices with continued support for X 10.5 and PPC users. If you are a huge fan of Anime, then consider yourself to be lucky because Twoflower has an improved MKV demuxer and rewritten linked segments with ordered chapter files support. Other notable features are support for FLAC, RV and MKV, rewritten seeking support in cue files and a few improvements in the ASS subtitles.

Twoflower is perfect for professional users. Check out the following features that you will love: SDI and HD-SDI card support for Linux, new Dirac/VC-2 encoder, EBU subtitles and EIA-608 support, support for Jpeg-2000 and DNxHD/VC-3 and additional support for ProRes 422, 4444 and AVC/Intra. For developers, Twoflower has a new set of libVLC examples for media player, photobooth and mediainfo. Developers will also love the all-new JSON requests in the web interface and the MPRIS2 interface.