Whereas VideoLAN delivers a beefy VLC Player update loaded with features, tweaks and fixes, Adobe has pushed out a Flash Player that’s largely about security. Regardless, there are critical updates available for these two popular tools.

• VLC Player 2.1.1 (download)
— Added support for HEVC/H.265 in MKV, MP4 and raw files
— Improved reliability for wav, mlp, mkv, modplug, ogg, avi and flac playback
— Improved random and reshuffling playback behavior
— Reintroduced language selection option known from pre-2.1 releases
— Improved compatibility with OS X 10.9 and 10.6
— Fixed http playback when using a system-wide proxy
— Fixed https playback using the system certificate store
— Updated 34 translations
— Mac UI tweaks and fixes
— See the full change log

• Flash Player 11.9.900.152 (download)
— Various bug and security fixes

For what it’s worth, Flash Player 11.9 requires a Mac with a 1.83GHz Core Duo or faster, OS X v10.6 or later, Safari 5 or later, 512MB RAM and a GPU with 128MB or more VRAM. VLC Player requires a 64-bit Intel Mac running OS X 10.6 or later.

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