What simply occurred? VideoLAN hit the Client Electronics Present in Las Vegas this week to showcase some AI-based enhancements destined for its in style VLC media participant. Chief amongst them is computerized subtitle technology, which runs on native and open-source AI fashions slightly than having to faucet right into a cloud-based service.
As President Jean-Baptiste Kempf demonstrated in a video shared on VideoLAN’s X account, the tech can even have the ability to translate subtitles to your most popular language on the fly. Based on Kempf, greater than 100 languages will ultimately be supported.
VLC computerized subtitles technology and translation based mostly on native and open supply AI fashions operating in your machine working offline, and supporting quite a few languages!
Demo may be discovered on our #CES2025 sales space in Eureka Park. pic.twitter.com/UVmgT6K4ds– VideoLAN (@videolan) January 8, 2025
The Verge notes that AI-powered subtitling has been in growth for some time now, albeit as a plug-in that makes use of OpenAI’s Whisper speech recognition system. What VideoLAN is displaying off at CES, nonetheless, is constructed straight into the VLC executable and works in actual time.
VideoLAN additionally used its time at CES to have fun a brand new milestone: over six billion downloads worldwide.
VLC was initially conceived as a shopper / server to stream video from satellite tv for pc dishes within the late 90s, however was ultimately rewritten from the bottom up and launched beneath a GNU Normal Public License in early 2001. Nowadays, it is among the many hottest cross-platform media gamers in the marketplace. This system is beloved by followers for its ease of use, compatibility throughout a wide range of working methods, and help for a spread of video codecs, and is even a TechSpot Editors’ Decide.
Six billion downloads is little question a formidable milestone, however it might be on the conservative aspect. Presumably, VideoLAN is simply counting downloads from its personal website. If true, it would not account for the quite a few further downloads tallied from third-party hosts. I am unsure how one would get a extra correct estimate of true downloads, however absolutely it is greater than 6 billion.
Kempf did not say when the brand new AI-based options would discover their option to the general public launch of VLC media participant. The most recent launch, model 3.0.21, dropped in October 2024 and is obtainable for Home windows, macOS, and Linux.
