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Alternative to VLC for media playback?

KasperH

KasperH

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 26, 2011
189
0
Hi :)

When running at my iMac's native resolution of 2560x1440, VLC is driving me crazy when i have to use the scrollbar, it is absolutely tiny and almost impossible to use properly with trackpad or mouse unless you really consentrate on the task.

I can't seem to find ANY settings in VLC to make the controls larger, other than minimizing the fullscreen window to a smaller window. I watch a lot of mkv, and xvid media. Any suggestions for a nice player without installing a heap of codec's and plugins?

I used to watch movies on my sony 40" via a PC, and 1920x1080 wasn't a problem.

br Kasper
 
Thanks for your suggestions, i appreciate it :)

I just tried MplayerX, and it's a VERY nice player! however it lacks two nice features that VLC supports. Playback of RAR and ISO directly.

Will try the other suggestions as well.

Edit: Mplayer OSX Extended was pretty similar to MplayerX, and supported the same containers and formats.
 
Last edited:
Xmbc

Look at XMBC. It's the best I've found, and currently works great on OS X Lion.

VERY SMOOTH playback on 1080p mkv's
 
I just tried Movist, and it's pretty good, but also doesn't support RAR and ISO playback.

Im using XBMC on my ATV2 in our living room, i'm pretty sure ISO is supported, not sure about RAR as the ATV2 can't, but the Mac version might work....Will investigate :)
 
XBMC plays ISO beautifully and also works great with the Apple remote, maybe I should just keep VLC for those rare occasions that i'm too lazy to unrar first.

Having to close down XBMC down when a video ends could end up being a little annoying when searching for that particular episode i might be looking for, but maybe that can be configured within XBMC...it's pretty well supported on their forums.

Perian + Quicktime, doesn't support RAR and ISO, and also seems a bit slow compared to the others.

Plex looks absolutely stunning, and works just as good as XBMC, supports the remote well, aswell as ISO playback. Though it lacks support for RAR as everything else, except VLC.

Edit:Tested another one called Miro, no ISO, no RAR.
 
Last edited:
Xanderhoff said:
playing rar's? I would think you'd have to UN-rar them before playback, eh?
Click to expand...

Normally yes, it seems only VLC manages this task....a very usefull feature really, since sometimes a 5gig rar archive split up in small chunks could be located on my NAS while i'm wirelessly connected on my MBP and really don't want to unrar such a large archive over a slow connection.
 
interesting, I did not know VLC played rar's. cool! I find its kinda choppy with 1080p stuff
 
unfortunately BSPlayer doesn't exist for Mac OS, that is one of the best for Windows. I think i have tried all the popular options for Mac now.

Maybe i can install a different skin for VLC that will improve the interface.
Playback seems smooth enough, i think, even 1080p sources.

Edit:
source:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.php
How to use these skins?
Skins do not work on Mac OS X!
 
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