VLC, the popular open-source multimedia player, has been updated to version 3.0.24 “Vetinari,” bringing a major FFmpeg upgrade, Flatpak build support, improved Qt 6 compatibility, and a long list of playback and streaming improvements.
The biggest change in VLC 3.0.24 is the move from FFmpeg 4.4 to 8.1.2. According to the developers, the newer multimedia stack should improve decoding performance and resolve playback issues across many formats. The update also refreshes many of VLC’s third-party libraries and continues improving Qt 6 support.
Linux users get another notable addition: Flatpak build support is now included directly in VLC. Codec support has also been expanded. VLC 3.0.24 adds decoding support for ATRAC3 and ATRAC9 audio, while MP4 files gain support for CEA-708 closed captions.
Subtitle handling sees several improvements as well, including better language detection and improved WebVTT handling.
The release also fixes numerous issues in VLC’s demuxers, including crashes, memory leaks, hangs, and malformed-file handling issues affecting MKV, MP4, MPEG-TS, Ogg, AVI, and other formats.
Streaming support gets several additions. RIST input and output now use librist, with support for both Simple and Main profiles, while SRT gains listener mode. SFTP support has also been improved with public-key authentication options and support for ED25519 host keys.
On Windows, VLC 3.0.24 fixes issues with the Direct3D11 adjust filter and texture leaks, while adding NV12 DirectShow capture support.
Several Windows audio crashes, leaks, and deadlocks have also been fixed. Another change fixes slow VLC startup during Daylight Saving Time changes. The release additionally adds Super Resolution scaling support for Moore Threads GPUs.
macOS users get a fix for an AudioToolbox MIDI synthesizer crash affecting macOS 26 and newer.
Moreover, VLC 3.0.24 improves several Qt dialogs and fixes how the effects window geometry is saved. A race condition affecting the LibVLC media list player has also been resolved.
A few obsolete or broken components are being removed at the same time. The RealRTSP plugin is now disabled in all build configurations, while the old NPAPI browser plugin and broken YouTube Lua script have been removed.
Importantly, HEVC streaming to original-generation Chromecast devices has also been disabled.
Finally, VLC 3.0.24 includes many security fixes addressing issues such as out-of-bounds accesses, integer overflows, double frees, and use-after-free bugs.
For additional details, see the changelog.
