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Amazing Video Playing app: Movist (QT/VLC Alternative)

Kardashian

Kardashian

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Sep 4, 2005
2,083
2
Britain.
I just want to give everyone a heads up about this (as far as I'm aware) little known app by the name of Movist.

It is by far the most stable App I have come across on Mac to play any form of video (iTMS content aside, obviously).

It doesn't even look ugly when you first download it, which I think VLC does. And there's quite a few themes out there for it.

Anyway, I love this b/c it handles MKV's beautifully. Quicktime needs to load the whole damn thing first, 20 mins a time, and then still stutters. VLC stutters sometimes, especially 1080p (2.4Ghz MBP, 3GB RAM) - and if you try and fast forward, oooh, it is pixel hell for a good 15 seconds. All jamming and freezing!

With Movist I can fast forward, rewind, seek, and jump scenes - not so much as a single frozen pixel.

Honestly, its very fluid - amazing. A lot of people have resorted to Plex to play media which VLC can't handle, but IMO Plex is absolutely horrendous to get around - this is super simple.

Support this one guys, its amazing. :)
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I just installed it. So far, so good. It loads WMVs instantly, unlike the loading bar I get with QT/F4M from time to time.
 
r.j.s said:
I just installed it. So far, so good. It loads WMVs instantly, unlike the loading bar I get with QT/F4M from time to time.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I'm utterly shocked by it.

So many people, myself including, have had to use that (in my opinion) awful Plex, which has this front-end which is like navigating a maze. And its keyboard-only. Nightmare.

This is neat, a small install, and stable. WMV,AVI and MKV which normally give VLC hassle go without a hitch on this.
 
It seems like a nice app, but I just can't see how it's better than QT with Perian or VLC. I could have missed something, I would gladly be corrected. :eek:
 
Kardashian said:
So many people, myself including, have had to use that (in my opinion) awful Plex, which has this front-end which is like navigating a maze. And its keyboard-only. Nightmare.
Click to expand...
While Plex is not to everyone's taste as is really only meant as a Front Row replacement, I can use my Apple Remote and my Harmony One on it with no problem. Once it is set up, its very easy to navigate.
 
MacAndy74 said:
It seems like a nice app, but I just can't see how it's better than QT with Perian or VLC. I could have missed something, I would gladly be corrected. :eek:
Click to expand...

You'll notice how smooth it is when you skip or just scrub through any movie, 720p, 1080p, over a network or local. Like butter.

EDIT: the program definitely has a few kinks to work out, the fps degrades when you skip around. Crashed twice after about 20 mins or so.
 
MacAndy74 said:
It seems like a nice app, but I just can't see how it's better than QT with Perian or VLC. I could have missed something, I would gladly be corrected. :eek:
Click to expand...

Simple:
Load a huge 1080p movie and fast forward, you will get around 10 seconds of lot of frozen pixels, while with Movist you won't have any trouble at all ;)
Also, you can move the movie time pointer like you do with Youtube (now, with recently update), while if you move it with VLC you will need to wait more than 10 seconds and it won't even be on the exact time you set in.
Check out it. Movist is awesome.

Plex is good only if you plug on a HDTV or something else, so you can work with your apple remote, other than that, it's a pain.


Thanks for letting the community know about Movist Kardashian! :)
 
flopticalcube said:
While Plex is not to everyone's taste as is really only meant as a Front Row replacement, I can use my Apple Remote and my Harmony One on it with no problem. Once it is set up, its very easy to navigate.
Click to expand...

Clearly you were so quick to get your mini-rant out you either failed to notice or chose not to care that I wrote in my opinion. My personal opinion does not mean you can classify it as rubbish b/c it isn't the same as yours.

Its meant as a Front Row replacement as you've said. I didn't want that - and since its me who started this thread, its from my POV.

What about for watching a movie without the remote, or the (in my opinion) complex set up process? I can't be bothered with that. I spend enough time getting my movies onto my Mac without having to spend hours sorting a program out to work how I want it to. Or having to grab the remote everytime I want to watch a movie. Plex is very un-Apple like.

Movist offers a Front Row-like experience also. As well as desktop-level player.

Oh, it also works with the Apple remote.

Don't be so quick to fire people down, next time.
 
Kardashian said:
Clearly you were so quick to get your mini-rant out you either failed to notice or chose not to care that I wrote in my opinion. My personal opinion does not mean you can classify it as rubbish b/c it isn't the same as yours.

Its meant as a Front Row replacement as you've said. I didn't want that - and since its me who started this thread, its from my POV.

What about for watching a movie without the remote, or the (in my opinion) complex set up process? I can't be bothered with that. I spend enough time getting my movies onto my Mac without having to spend hours sorting a program out to work how I want it to. Or having to grab the remote everytime I want to watch a movie. Plex is very un-Apple like.

Movist offers a Front Row-like experience also. As well as desktop-level player.

Oh, it also works with the Apple remote.

Don't be so quick to fire people down, next time.
Click to expand...

What you said was:

So many people, myself including, have had to use that (in my opinion) awful Plex
Click to expand...

To which I basically agreed:

While Plex is not to everyone's taste
Click to expand...

You also said:

which has this front-end which is like navigating a maze. And its keyboard-only.
Click to expand...
Which is clearly rubbish as it can be used with a variety of remotes.

and as for this:

Or having to grab the remote everytime I want to watch a movie.
Click to expand...

Let's see, you don't like things that use keyboards but you don't want to use a remote?
 
Movist and Plex serve different purposes in my opinion. Movist is like Cog, and Plex is like iTunes, one a player, one a library/database/...

I do agree Movist is good, and have been using it for months now, but if i want to have a movie day, i'll pull up plex to browse my movie library (synopsis included).

If you want a robust player that is absolutely solid, mplayer from the cli. It is nothing like the front end app for the mac.
 
I don't like how it quits when you close the movie ... but, since it is so quick to load, I guess I can get over it. It is fast and smooth.
 
r.j.s said:
I don't like how it quits when you close the movie ... but, since it is so quick to load, I guess I can get over it. It is fast and smooth.
Click to expand...

How does it quits? When the movie ends, it just stop to play it!

Only think I unlike about Movist is the way subtitles are displayed! I love VLC's style, but can't customize Movist to be like VLC's!
 
flopticalcube said:
Which is clearly rubbish as it can be used with a variety of remotes.


...

Let's see, you don't like things that use keyboards but you don't want to use a remote?
Click to expand...
Not with a desktop app, no.

If I said 'Great Front Row replacement!' - sure, keyboard and remote would be fine.

But I said Quicktime and VLC replacement, which do not require a remote or keyboard to use so I wouldn't expect their 'rival' to be limited to only those forms of input.

Basically, the Plex vs Movist/QT/VLC argument is irrelevant and you had no reason to go on this campaign in the first place.

r.j.s said:
Thanks. I hadn't even looked in the preferences yet.
Click to expand...

And I believe there's also an option to create a bookmark from where you left off but I could be mistaken.
 
This is really good. The seeking's great. I love the "Always On Top only while playing" feature. If you pause the video it can go to the back. Handy.

It opens WMVs right away but messed up a bit on them when I seeked.

Still, impressive.

EDIT: Is there a way to turn off the on-screen text?
 
Kahnyl said:
This is really good. The seeking's great. I love the "Always On Top only while playing" feature. If you pause the video it can go to the back. Handy.

It opens WMVs right away but messed up a bit on them when I seeked.

Still, impressive.

EDIT: Is there a way to turn off the on-screen text?
Click to expand...

I don't believe so. Thats one of the things I wanted to disable.

We could write to the developer.
 
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