Many videos stuck while playing with VLC

[yellowhelicopter]

Hi. I've got Mac Mini M1 and using VLC (native version) I have this very annoying problem that many videos may stuck in certain places, often like every 5-10 secs or so, I have to skip forward each time to force it to play again. AVI, TS, MP4, I think it doesn't matter. Basically it doesn't happen with big high quality videos, but happens a lot with small video files in low res. Quicktime Player does it too, but not that often as VLC. I guess it happens when there are missing frames or something like that, some defects in video files, at least I think so.

The thing is it never happened with Media Player Classic on Win 10, it kept to play videos anyway. I thought that Mac video players wouldn't be worse but alas.

So my question is is there any player for Mac which would be similar to Media Player Classic on PC in terms of handling not so perfect video files?

 

[bogdanw]

Try with IINA https://iina.io

 

[pshufd]

I've had this problem recently and just run with IINA when it happens. IINA has bugs sometimes too.

 

[yellowhelicopter]

Try with IINA https://iina.io

I've had this problem recently and just run with IINA when it happens. IINA has bugs sometimes too.

Yep, I've tried IINA, it seems it doesn't hang videos, but unfortunately it has different issue - instead such videos often start to play with big frame drops, like 5-10 fps and the normal play doesn't resume by itself after problematic places it seems. Media Player Classic on Win (or its codecs) handled them so much better, ideally I'd say.

 

[bogdanw]

Media Player Classic on Win (or its codecs) handled them so much better, ideally I'd say.

Are you referring to MPC-HC? https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc
Other free video players you can try on macOS
SMPlayer https://www.smplayer.info
mpv https://mpv.io

 

[yellowhelicopter]

Are you referring to MPC-HC? https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc

Yes, used it for years and never had such problems with it.

 

[bogdanw]

Yes, used it for years and never had such problems with it.

I agree, MPC-HC is the best video player ever
You can install it on macOS using CrossOver (probably even PlayOnMac), but I don’t think it will be very helpful.
CrossOver https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover
PlayOnMac https://www.playonmac.com/en/

mpv and IINA might have an option that can help playing broken files:
--index=<mode>
“Controls how to seek in files. Note that if the index is missing from a file, it will be built on the fly by default, so you don't need to change this. But it might help with some broken files.
default: use an index if the file has one, or build it if missing
recreate: don't read or use the file's index”
https://mpv.io/manual/master/#playback-control

In IINA Settings – Advanced – Additional mpv options: index recreate
In mpv ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf --index=recreate