It's been almost a year since the VideoLAN team raised enough money via Kickstarter (close to $76,000) to work on a Windows 8 app for its very popular VLC video player. Since then, we have reported that the development of the app has taken much longer than first predicted, mainly because the team has had to stamp down what are known as "forbidden calls" in the program. Today, VideoLAN President Jean-Baptiste Kempf sent Neowin an exclusive update on their progress and it looks like we are very close to an actual release.

Kempf sent over a link that showed that the VLC app had passed Microsoft's Windows App Certification Kit test, which the page shows was accomplished on September 23rd. That's the good news. The bad news? As Kempf told us, "In order to achieve that, we had to disable the audio output, but we are working on that, for the next couple of weeks."

Hopefully the audio output will be enabled quickly and Kempf assured us that more news on the VLC Windows 8 front will be announced "soon". It has certainly been a long wait for those people who donated money to the Kickstarter campaign so that the all volunteer team at VideoLAN could complete the Windows 8 app. We really do wish them the best of luck as they get close to the finish line.

Image via VideoLAN