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Good "Lionized" movie player out there?

ksgant

ksgant

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 12, 2006
797
710
Chicago
On Snow Leopard i used Movist all the time. It was a light-weight ffmpeg player that played anything and everything I threw at it. It seems to almost be abandonware though as it hasn't been updated in over a year. So of course it doesn't adhere to any of the Lion standards and it's windows can't even be re-sized except from the lower right hand old-style mac. It also seems to "freeze" once in a blue moon with Lion for like a quarter second.

I tried MplayerX, which is on the App store and that seems to work okay, but some of my video files...such as some, but not all AVI files...seem to muck up the works. For instance some movies I can't fast forward on, it just snaps back to the beginning and messes up the sound a bit. Or if I try to slide it forward half-way, it just freezes the movie.

I would use VLC, but I don't like the controls. No matter what I do, I can never ever ever ever get it to work with my arrow keys. I just like hitting the right arrow...by itself, no modifier key...to skip ahead 10 seconds, and then the left arrow to go back 10 seconds. Both Movist and MplayerX do this. (well, not always with MplayerX due to the problem above). In VLC, I've tried and tried to make it do that just using the arrows, but it won't work. Or else I fail at preferences.

So this also leaves out using Perian with the normal Quicktime player, as that doesn't really do anything either.
 
K

Kanunu

macrumors 6502
Apr 18, 2009
262
6
Hawaii
Quicktime Player 7

I have always used VLC as my first choice because it is the most capable at playing AVI files and automatically picking up subtitles. I am not sure if this is part of Lion or it just rolled out at a similar time but Quicktime player 7.app does the same things. The interface looks identical to Quicktime but the functionality seems better at least to me.

There must be another way to download it but I found it by right clicking an AVI and clicking Open with>Quicktime player.app. A screen will come up asking you if you want to download 7.

Quicktime player 7.app seems to be a separate app from Quicktime,app so it does not upgrade or overwrite. For some reason it installed itself in my Utilites folder but I simply moved it.
 
N

NameUndecided

macrumors 6502a
Mar 28, 2011
751
68
I was going to recommend MPlayerX because I think it works so well. It's simple in design, and I like the way it uses trackpad gestures. I've been using it for pretty much every video file-type for the past five months or more and I haven't had any problems with it like you described. It automatically opens with all of my mkv, avi, wmv, most every other video file - and I use the ten-second jump ahead all the time. I don't know what the difference could be between our set ups.

I like Plex as well, but it's best put to use when you've got a largish movie collection to organize and you're maybe using with it a home theater type situation, or you're interested in streaming from your computer to another computer or iPad or iPhone with their Plex app.
 
S

singhjeet29

macrumors regular
Oct 9, 2008
248
12
MPlayer OSX Extended

MPlayer OSX Extended I find is the best. Personally I find it better than MPlayerX (although MPlayerX has some nicer features, but overall I find MPlayer OSX Extended does what I want most of the time). And I find it MUCH better than VLC.

It plays every codec I've come across. There hasn't been a video file that I've played that had any problems.
 
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