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Gattz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 20, 2008
118
0
I've noticed, at least for me, that playing 1080p movies with VLC is much smoother, than playing with Quicktime. My question is that does this smoother playback mean less video and audio quality?
 
Plex is the best, VLC is too processor intensive for 1080p on OS X, and can cause lagging, skipped frames, and poor resolutions on anything other than the best processors.
 
Plex is the best, VLC is too processor intensive for 1080p on OS X, and can cause lagging, skipped frames, and poor resolutions on anything other than the best processors.

Quicktime actually runs smoother for me than VLC on 1080P stuff, weird.
 
I'm guessing it depends on the file format and other miscellaneous things. VLC is fine, but QT with perian seems to handle .mkv files better.
 
quicktime it written really poorly.

VLC is a tad better but its developers havent optimised it good enough for Macs (especially the weaker ones_=).

plex is mac only software and will pretty much play 1080p rips on anything - even my 3 year old original MBP :):):):):)

plex ftw !
 
I've never heard of Plex, but I can see it is pretty popular with Mac owners. The problem is that I keep getting this "Mounting Failed" whenever I try to download it. Not to mention it is really slow downloading speeds, but I am at college. Anyone know what to do?
 
I've never heard of Plex, but I can see it is pretty popular with Mac owners. The problem is that I keep getting this "Mounting Failed" whenever I try to download it. Not to mention it is really slow downloading speeds, but I am at college. Anyone know what to do?

are you running off your schools network? i have noticed that when i am using my fiancee's school network it runs slowly and a lot of times downloads dont work properly. dont really know the reason, but i would wait till you can use it somewhere else.
 
QuickTime is excellent if your Mac is powerful enough because it's been designed to utilise certain hardware and software features of OS X. Weaker Macs don't fare as well.

If I find a video that won't play at full speed (only ever on my PBG4, never on my MBP) then I drop back on MPlayer OSX Extended. It offers a few speed features that make HD videos (720p) nearly watchable.
 
i find that .mov 1080p files play perfect in quicktime.

.mkv plays only in plex unless its only a 720p, then it plays fine in VLC, and i would use VLC in that case because its not so cumbersome to use.

Plex should release a media player which isnt focused on catering for media centres, just take the eye candy away and leave a good player behind.

One thing that i HATE about plex is the fact that the letterbox bars arent black!!!! It drives me crazy when the blacks in the HD movies are blacker than the letterboxes.

Ive got a 2.0 unibody macbook so its not quite in the powerhouse catagory which might explain why it doesnt play 1080p .mkv in VLC perfectly.
 
What system do you have? It makes a difference. If you have a system sold in the last year then QT should be just as smooth as VLC and if not you probably need to update your system or reset your SMC.
 
Mine is a early 09 MBP, but apparently I need to reset my SMC. I read a little about it here http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411, but it doesn't seem that I should do it.

Also, I got Plex to install, but can someone help me out with the video controls? I want to take off subtitles, move to different parts of the video, etc. The only thing I know how to do now is fullscreen. By the way, what is "true fullscreen"?

Nevermind, I figured out how to use it. But still, what is true fullscreen mode?
 
i use plex. but on my windows machine i used coreavc codec which is apparently the best decoder. i heard they were porting it to mac but that was a while back. does anyone know whats going on with that ?
 
I think HD h264 mov files are gpu accelerated in Quicktime, that's why even the 2nd gen MBA can play HD movies. Other than that QT sucks balls.

I use VLC for everything, except 1080p MKVs. For those to play smoothly I use plex. It appears that VLC can only utilize 1 of the CPU cores because it reaches 50% CPU utilization, and begins to skip frames in 1080p MKVs. When I use plex, about 60-70% of the CPU time is used, and the video runs perfectly.
 
Maybe I am doing something different.

But I use quicktime for everything and I never have any performance problems. I connect it to 1920 x 1080 LCD and go full screen with no issue.

I have a late 2008 mbp 2.5ghz with 4gigs of ram.

I also have vmware running and a bunch of other apps and still don't seem to have any problem with HD content.

-Zeek
 
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