Is the new VLC (2.0.8) more efficient than CorePlayer?

[Swampus]

I just saw mention in another thread (h/t MrPilot) that there is a new version of VLC.

I've tried a couple of 1080p files on my MDD with this new VLC (version 2.0.8) and was absolutely amazed. I'm getting better performance than with CorePlayer with the files that I tried (H.264, 1920 × 1080, Millions AAC, Stereo L R, 44.100 kHz mp4 container).

In VLC, I have "skip the loop filter for h.264 decoding" set to "all." This is supposed to degrade the quality, but I didn't notice a difference picture quality between VLC and CorePlayer using this setting. I suppose that could vary depending on the quality of one's eyes and display.

No missed frames in either case, but VLC is using 10 to 15% less CPU than Core Player! CPU use fluctuates through the whole movie, of course, so I'm trying not to overstate this since I can't pin down an exact number, but VLC was hovering in the low 70s and Core Player in the high 80s.

My machine is running 2 x 7455B @ 1.58GHz.

This has to mean that they've restored some of the AltiVec code that was originally disabled in version 2, right? Maybe even improved on it?

I'd love to see others who have Core Player do some comparisons with the new VLC. All of my 1080p is encoded exactly the same way, so I'm not going to get much variation.

If this pans out, who needs CorePlayer? VLC has always been way better in every other way.

May I humbly suggest that anyone who wanted to purchase CorePlayer, but didn't get it in time (or tried to buy it and had their money refunded, as I've read a couple of times here), please consider donating that same money to the VideoLAN team. Who else continues to improve things so much for our beloved PowerPC machines?

 

[Swampus]

Experimenting with some 720p since I have a bigger variety of those:

File one: H.264, 1280 × 720, Millions, AAC, Stereo (L R), 44.100 kHz .mp4 container.

Winner: VLC!

VLC fluctuated between 40 to 44% CPU use.
CorePlayer fluctuated between 45 to 48%.
Quicktime was over 60%.

File two: H.264, 1280 × 720, Millions, AC3, 5.1 (L R C LFE Ls Rs), 48.000 kHz .mkv container.

Winner: Slight edge to CorePlayer

CorePlayer fluctuated between 44 to 48% CPU use.
VLC fluctuated between 46 to 50%.
Quicktime dropped nearly half the frames, so I didn't bother.

File three: JVT/AVC Coding, 1280 × 720, Millions, AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz .m4v container.

Winner: Tie!

CorePlayer and VLC both played this at about 43 to 45% CPU use.
Quicktime at 70% CPU said that it was playing full frame rate, but it looked choppy to me.

Again, as I stated in the first post, all of this is with "skip the loop filter for h.264 decoding" set to "all" in preferences (under "Input and Codecs").

It's easy to imagine that VLC 2.0.8 could enable some mid-range G4s that might have previously struggled to now play 720p smoothly even without CorePlayer. VLC and CorePlayer seem pretty close to each other when playing 720p. On the 1080p files that I tried, VLC was more clearly the winner.

That concludes my experimenting for the day (spent more time on this than I should have). Curious to hear from other CorePlayer owners when you have time--Or just from folks comparing new and old VLC.

 

[SkyBell]

Perhaps they have improved; I remember the first couple of iterations of version 2 being absolute crap.

 

[iMerik]

Great information. I tend to use VLC by default and without thinking anymore.

 

[Swampus]

Perhaps they have improved; I remember the first couple of iterations of version 2 being absolute crap.

Oh, you've got to try the new one then! I thought the same thing. I had gone back to version 1.1.9 or something until today.

 

[MrPilot]

XBMC is still faster than VLC

doesn't skip the loop filters yet I can watch some 1080p movies on this single G4 powerbook while vlc just freezes.

 

[ihuman:D]

Can you run XBMC in windowed mode instead of fullscreen?

 

[rjcalifornia]

XBMC is still faster than VLC

doesn't skip the loop filters yet I can watch some 1080p movies on this single G4 powerbook while vlc just freezes.

I only use VLC on my Windows machine, 2.x version for mac powerpc was slow. I might try this one.

Chroma seems faster than VLC and XBMC (ibook G4)

 

[MrPilot]

I only use VLC on my Windows machine, 2.x version for mac powerpc was slow. I might try this one.

Chroma seems faster than VLC and XBMC (ibook G4)

chroma was slowww on hd content

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Can you run XBMC in windowed mode instead of fullscreen?

yes apple+f

 

[ihuman:D]

Thanks, I wasn't sure.

 

[Swampus]

I didn't know that either. That adds an extra dimension to XBMC for me. I guess I need to play around with it a little more. I've found the interface to be clunky for playing local files, but I probably haven't given it a fair shot. Can you make it play in full screen on a display that is not your start-up display? I tried that, but it kept going back to the display with the menu bar.

I currently have version 10.1 installed. I think I've read here that it's faster than newer versions? I just tested these same files with it. My 1080p files were choppy. My 720p files played nicely, but used way more CPU than CorePlayer or the new VLC. Maybe I need to adjust some settings?

 

[wobegong]

I've always found VLC to be great - XBMC is good also but as said already here its a clunky interface for just playing a file (although absolutely great as a dedicated media centre). Never had any issues playing any file on VLC and I don't care how much CPU is being used as when I'm watching a video the machine won't be doing other tasks in the background anyway, so long as playback is smooth (which it always is) I'm happy.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

Havne't noticed any improvement over even VLC 1.x.x, just a clunkier and different interface.

 

[MrPilot]

I didn't know that either. That adds an extra dimension to XBMC for me. I guess I need to play around with it a little more. I've found the interface to be clunky for playing local files, but I probably haven't given it a fair shot. Can you make it play in full screen on a display that is not your start-up display? I tried that, but it kept going back to the display with the menu bar.

I currently have version 10.1 installed. I think I've read here that it's faster than newer versions? I just tested these same files with it. My 1080p files were choppy. My 720p files played nicely, but used way more CPU than CorePlayer or the new VLC. Maybe I need to adjust some settings?

10 makes no sense to have... either go with 9.11 and tiger osx for fastest performance or go with 11 and leopard.

and also if you go to settings-> video you can choose which display to output XBMC to.

the stuff you can do with xbmc with plugins and it's library system are amazing

 

[Swampus]

Havne't noticed any improvement over even VLC 1.x.x, just a clunkier and different interface.

Interesting. And this is on your dual 1.8? You do have a little more power than I do. Maybe my machine is just exactly at the point where a huge difference can be noticed. VLC 1.x.x dropped frames when playing 1080p and sometimes just froze for half a second or so. VLC 2.0.8 plays them smoothly and with less overhead than CorePlayer.

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10 makes no sense to have... either go with 9.11 and tiger osx for fastest performance or go with 11 and leopard.

and also if you go to settings-> video you can choose which display to output XBMC to.

the stuff you can do with xbmc with plugins and it's library system are amazing

Thanks for the advice. I'm going to devote some time to exploring it this weekend. Clearly, it has a loyal following among people who understand older Macs.

 

[CptSky]

From VLC release notes:

- Multi-threaded decoding for H.264, MPEG-4/Xvid and WebM.
- Continued support for X 10.5 and PPC users (1080p and ProRes on Dual-G5!).

So well, they probably continued to implement AltiVec and PPC features to speed up the decoding, with also adding a multi-threaded decoding for H.264, which should make a big difference.

 

[MacOSTiger]

Sadly no PPC MacOS Tiger support.

I just saw mention in another thread (h/t MrPilot) that there is a new version of VLC.

I've tried a couple of 1080p files on my MDD with this new VLC (version 2.0.8) and was absolutely amazed. I'm getting better performance than with CorePlayer with the files that I tried (H.264, 1920 × 1080, Millions AAC, Stereo L R, 44.100 kHz mp4 container).

In VLC, I have "skip the loop filter for h.264 decoding" set to "all." This is supposed to degrade the quality, but I didn't notice a difference picture quality between VLC and CorePlayer using this setting. I suppose that could vary depending on the quality of one's eyes and display.

No missed frames in either case, but VLC is using 10 to 15% less CPU than Core Player! CPU use fluctuates through the whole movie, of course, so I'm trying not to overstate this since I can't pin down an exact number, but VLC was hovering in the low 70s and Core Player in the high 80s.

My machine is running 2 x 7455B @ 1.58GHz.

This has to mean that they've restored some of the AltiVec code that was originally disabled in version 2, right? Maybe even improved on it?

I'd love to see others who have Core Player do some comparisons with the new VLC. All of my 1080p is encoded exactly the same way, so I'm not going to get much variation.

If this pans out, who needs CorePlayer? VLC has always been way better in every other way.

May I humbly suggest that anyone who wanted to purchase CorePlayer, but didn't get it in time (or tried to buy it and had their money refunded, as I've read a couple of times here), please consider donating that same money to the VideoLAN team. Who else continues to improve things so much for our beloved PowerPC machines?

Thanks but no Tiger support means CorePlayer is still the almighty on my PowerPC machine. I'd gladly support VideoLan if they didn't leave out Tiger in their upgrades. Really there's no reason to leave Tiger users in the dust because PPC Leopard and PPC Tiger are so much a like in so many ways.

 

[Intell]

Thanks but no Tiger support means CorePlayer is still the almighty on my PowerPC machine. I'd gladly support VideoLan if they didn't leave out Tiger in their upgrades. Really there's no reason to leave Tiger users in the dust because PPC Leopard and PPC Tiger are so much a like in so many ways.

Tiger's toolchain is too old without heavy porting for VLC.org to build for it. It is also missing some critical APIs that are needed to render the VLC 2.X window and provide the best possible video playback.

 

[Nova77]

Since zen.state isn't here anymore, allow me to take his role for a second.

"You are delusional if you think less CPU usage means better performance"

lol Well it had to be said.
Truth is less CPU usage probably means better efficiency but not better performance. I still get similar results from VLC frame-rate wise, and CorePlayer still has a huge edge on that matter. Everything feels more fluid when played with CorePlayer, and FPS support this.

What I mean is at same CPU load, CorePlayer totally owns VLC.

That being said, I've noticed slight performance improvements on the latest VLC releases, and HUGE improvements on badly encoded HD videos playback (seems it does a better job a "repairing" HD videos).

But still, its great news that VLC uses less CPU, because it means less heat for the CPU and/or more battery life on a laptop.

So... go get 2.0.8 now if you don't have it already!!!

Experimenting with some 720p since I have a bigger variety of those:

File one: H.264, 1280 × 720, Millions, AAC, Stereo (L R), 44.100 kHz .mp4 container.

Winner: VLC!

VLC fluctuated between 40 to 44% CPU use.
CorePlayer fluctuated between 45 to 48%.
Quicktime was over 60%.

File two: H.264, 1280 × 720, Millions, AC3, 5.1 (L R C LFE Ls Rs), 48.000 kHz .mkv container.

Winner: Slight edge to CorePlayer

CorePlayer fluctuated between 44 to 48% CPU use.
VLC fluctuated between 46 to 50%.
Quicktime dropped nearly half the frames, so I didn't bother.

File three: JVT/AVC Coding, 1280 × 720, Millions, AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz .m4v container.

Winner: Tie!

CorePlayer and VLC both played this at about 43 to 45% CPU use.
Quicktime at 70% CPU said that it was playing full frame rate, but it looked choppy to me.

Again, as I stated in the first post, all of this is with "skip the loop filter for h.264 decoding" set to "all" in preferences (under "Input and Codecs").

It's easy to imagine that VLC 2.0.8 could enable some mid-range G4s that might have previously struggled to now play 720p smoothly even without CorePlayer. VLC and CorePlayer seem pretty close to each other when playing 720p. On the 1080p files that I tried, VLC was more clearly the winner.

That concludes my experimenting for the day (spent more time on this than I should have). Curious to hear from other CorePlayer owners when you have time--Or just from folks comparing new and old VLC.