VLC on MB Air

[ET iPhone Home]

I switched from a PC to Mac recently, When I tried to play movies that I ripped and backed up in an external hare drive, I could not play them. So I went to Best Buy's Geek Squad to inquire and was advised to download VLC. This is how I found about it.

Thanks for your suggestion on Handbrake. I've downloaded the program, but I haven't used it, but will this week. I hope it's user friendly. I want to maintain the best format and resolution possible in my backups so I can give away my dvd's. They're just sitting collecting dust and I don't ever anticipate ever watching them anymore, so I'd rather back up my favorites and give them all away. With Christmas underway, I expect to receive more dvd's. I don't know how I got people to start giving me dvd's. I'm not even a movie buff. And the last time I went to the movies was when I saw 9/11. I think that's the title.

Edit: I remember the last movie I saw at the Theatre, World Trade Center". That was 4 years ago.

 

[Weaselboy]

Because VLC sucks. On Windows, you just use a codec pack and a proper video player like Media Player Classic. On OS X, you should be using something like MPlayer OS X Extended. Same for Linux really.

Not this again. Use the search function next time.

YouTube: video

Sure it is, but it's right. Can you counter the facts ? Of course not, VLC sucks, there are better options out there. No need to use the worst video player because :



Sure and I'm just fine eating dry bread and water. Doesn't mean I don't aspire to better.

MplayerX or Mplayer OS X Extended are both superior options.

I prefer Movist for video playback, but many seem happy with VLC. So you just throw out "it sucks" and expect us to watch a three minute video to decipher your reasoning? No thanks.

 

[halledise]

Movist - as a player - is better than VLC (imho)

 

[Roman2K~]

Movist - as a player - is better than VLC (imho)

Except when it crashes, which is... most of the time. VLC has been rock solid, eating through everything I've fed it. Plus, it renders videos sharper and a bit smoother, using less CPU.

Not to mention, Movist is unmaintained. Last release dates back from April 2010.

 

[Weaselboy]

I prefer Movist for video playback, but many seem happy with VLC.

Except when it crashes, which is... most of the time. VLC has been rock solid, eating through everything I've fed it. Please, it renders videos sharper and a bit smoother, using less CPU.

Not to mention, Movist is unmaintained. Last release dates back from April 2010.

Incorrect. See the link in my post. Movist is now free in the App store and maintained. Latest release was two weeks ago. I have not had crashing problems with the App store version.

 

[Roman2K~]

Incorrect. See the link in my post. Movist is now free in the App store and maintained. Latest release was two weeks ago. I have not had crashing problems with the App store version.

I didn't know that, thanks. Though it costs $5, which I wouldn't mind shelling out if it was still open-source. Do you have a link to their repository or is it closed-source now?

 

[Weaselboy]

I didn't know that, thanks. Though it costs $5, which I wouldn't mind shelling out if it was still open-source. Do you have a link to their repository or is it closed-source now?

Whoops... I forgot I paid $5 for it. I believe it is now commercial only.

 

[KnightWRX]

So you just throw out "it sucks" and expect us to watch a three minute video to decipher your reasoning? No thanks.

Fine, I'll save you the 3 minutes :

- Horrible sub title font rendering
- Audio rape while seeking
- no instant pause/play
- bad downscaling
- slow down during seeking
- sub title desynchronization during seeking

Conclusion : People who use VLC and think it's "good enough" just don't know any better. I didn't just throw out "it sucks". It does. That you didn't bother to look at the evidence presented is your own fault.

----------

I didn't know that, thanks. Though it costs $5, which I wouldn't mind shelling out if it was still open-source. Do you have a link to their repository or is it closed-source now?

Save yourself the money. It seems Movist has moved on with version 1.0.0 from their Google code page.

MplayerX and Mplayer OS X extended both still do open source releases outside the MAS for free :

http://code.google.com/p/mplayerosxext/downloads/list
http://mplayerx.org/#Download

 

[Roman2K~]

- Horrible sub title font rendering

Some .idx + .sub do render with jagged edges but still way readable. The rest, .srt and such, render fine: smooth edges, good default size and position.

- Audio rape while seeking

Do you mean some sort of screeching? It may have happened once or twice, don't remember the context, but I agree that, even though it must have had a good reason at the time, this should never happen.

- no instant pause/play
- slow down during seeking
- sub title desynchronization during seeking

Pause / resume have been instant since v1.0. All three points are inherent to how VLC treats files, which I assume you're refering to. VLC sees every kind of input as streams of decodable blocks.

Even a file, which it could do fine grained, instant seeks on, is treated as a stream with just enough read ahead to fill up buffers.

That's why seeks aren't instant and audio takes a while to come back on, it needs to read enough blocks to re-sync. Annoying with files, but understandable as it's also the reason why it's so efficient with other streams (especially downloads still in-progress).

- bad downscaling

What do you mean? Blurry? You can always file a bug report.

 

[Menge]

- Horrible sub title font rendering

Subtitles render at the same resolution as the movie in VLC. If you're unhappy with the subtitle rendering, it's not VLC's fault. It's the movie you're playing that is low-res.

- Audio rape while seeking

Never had that.

- no instant pause/play

It's instant here (VLC 1.1.12)

- bad downscaling

Downscaling? Really?! If you were talking about upscaling, I'd give credit. But downscaling is not something usually done to movies.

- slow down during seeking

Pretty instant for me, here.

- sub title desynchronization during seeking

Only for the duration of the last line shown before you started seeking. It goes away after that line disappears.

Conclusion : People who use VLC and think it's "good enough" just don't know any better. I didn't just throw out "it sucks". It does. That you didn't bother to look at the evidence presented is your own fault.

The takeaway from this is that you tried VLC back when it had those problems, created the stigma that it was bad and never tried it again.

Again: VLC is fine as a movie player. Your complaints either no longer apply or are simply nitpicking for corner cases (like the subtitle while seeking).

 

[Roman2K~]

Downscaling? Really?! If you were talking about upscaling, I'd give credit. But downscaling is not something usually done to movies.

Actually, downscaling is common, like when playing a 1080p video on a MacBook Air display. 1920x1080 => 1366x768 or 1440x900.

 

[Eidorian]

I am pretty set on the 1.2.0 and 1.3.0 nightlies for VLC. It is a shame they are not out in stable yet.

 

[Carl Abudephane]

.

 

[Menge]

Actually, downscaling is common, like when playing a 1080p video on a MacBook Air display. 1920x1080 => 1366x768 or 1440x900.

Fine. I'll bite: I get no artifacts when downscaling a movie to 50% of its size here – which is more than you would do if you were watching a full-HD Bluray. I really don't see why the fuss.

 

[KnightWRX]

Downscaling? Really?! If you were talking about upscaling, I'd give credit. But downscaling is not something usually done to movies.

So you've never watched a 1080p movie on your 1440x900 MBA screen hum ? Why would I download 2 files exactly ? The movie player should be plenty capable of downscaling.

----------

All I care about is that MPlayerX doesn't play my 1080 rips smoothly, but VLC does. One plays them fine, one doesn't.
At least on my 2009 13" MacBook Pro that is.

Probably using a branch of MplayerX that uses FFmpeg standard instead of FFMpeg-mt.

 

[orfeas0]

Not this again. Use the search function next time.

YouTube: video

hahahhaa epic video!! I'll try MplayerX but VLC plays fine for me, and when I say fine I don't mean "acceptable". Play/pause doesn't lag, it plays ALL (no exceptions) file types, subs are added automatically (when on the same folder as the movie and with the same name), and it repairs broken avi files (although I don't understand that... maybe they're not broken for other video players, I'll try and tell you).
edit: Yep, they files are only "broken" for vlc. MplayerX plays it fine.

Thanks for the info.
Also, does MplayerX play all video files?

 

[Menge]

So you've never watched a 1080p movie on your 1440x900 MBA screen hum ? Why would I download 2 files exactly ? The movie player should be plenty capable of downscaling.

It is capable of downscaling. I've played 1080p videos on my 1280x800 MBP screen and it displays fine and has no visible artifacts or jaggies. I never said you should download different files. But at that level of downscaling, VLC does just as well as other players around.

 

[halledise]

Except when it crashes, which is... most of the time.

huh???

Movist fine here on multiple Macs

 

[Steve121178]

Because VLC sucks.

VLC is a fantastic application and costs nothing. Therefore it definitely does not 'suck'.

 

[Roman2K~]

huh???

Movist fine here on multiple Macs

The version I tried is the last open-source one from April 2010. Most every bug must have been fixed in the paid, closed-source version on the MacAppStore. But I'm not giving my money to closed-source so I wouldn't know.

VLC is a fantastic application and costs nothing. Therefore it definitely does not 'suck'.

+1. One of the best pieces of software I use on a daily basis.

Not only that, but it's actively maintained. And head developers are extremely talented. They have strong opinions about code quality and this has a direct impact on the patches they accept.

As a bonus, Jean-Baptiste Kempf told me they're making good progress on hardware acceleration of H.264 decoding via OS X's VDADecoder. It won't be part of v1.2 but it's coming soon!

 

[Queen6]

I tried most of the players on offer and VLC came out top on CPU usage, there is little to none hardware acceleration on Mac`s outside of Apple`s own QuickTime. The version of Movist I tried was free at the time. One of the key factors is picking a player that will develop alongside the OS, there have been many fantastic players for windows, and equally many have fallen by the wayside due to lack of development.

VLC is by far not the most integrated OS X application, presumably as it grew up on Microsoft`s dominant platform, however in fullscreen it`s simply not an issue and it`s still the fastest (64bit), most efficient player at present for OS X to play MKV`s and will give you the longest battery run time & cooler temps

I would really like some of the more integrated, Apple-esque player catch up on performance, however my observations so far are more CPU cycles and some even running dual process, several being based on one core player. Movist has now gone comercial and it will be interesting to see how it develops as a player, if I see regular updates I will give it a shot, if not then sadly Movist will also be forgotten about...

My only real criticism of VLC is sub title placement other than that it is difficult to fault as it`s a very stable player that has matured over time..

 

[Roman2K~]

@Queen6
VLC v1.2 is coming, bringing the following (among other things):

• A whole new native OS X GUI with Lion's full-screen mode (optional)
• Multicore decoding
• Subtitle rendering independently of the resolution of the video

You can try it out in a v1.2 nightly build. Don't hesitate to file bug reports along the way .

 

[KnightWRX]

@Queen6
VLC v1.2 is coming, bringing the following (among other things):

• Multicore decoding

• 
  
  Mplayer OS X Extended and MplayerX already support this through FFmpeg-mt. If VLC are only now implementing the -mt branch of FFmpeg, they are quite late.
  
  I don't get why Queen6 would say all other players "use more cpu" is a downside. I think using both my cores is an upside of the other players, I can play much higher bitrate/resolution video without having it drop frames (like VLC does to maintain performance).

 

[Roman2K~]

Mplayer OS X Extended and MplayerX already support this through FFmpeg-mt. If VLC are only now implementing the -mt branch of FFmpeg, they are quite late.

It has taken a while indeed. But from what I read, the -mt branch wasn't officially stable (namely, not a branch anymore, becoming the SVN trunk) until late match 2011. Before that, it wasn't as efficient as the single-threaded version.

I think VLC developers waited for the "stable" status before making it part of the next major release, v1.2. It's been integrated since may 2011, in the v1.2 branch nightlies.

About 2 months, not that long actually.

 

[KnightWRX]

It has taken a while indeed. But from what I read, the -mt branch wasn't officially stable (namely, not a branch anymore, becoming the SVN trunk) until late match 2011. Before that, it wasn't as efficient as the single-threaded version.

It wasn't as efficient maybe, but I've been using it since it's been available in the different Mplayer releases on OS X. And frankly, what it lacked in "efficiency", it more than made up by using the 2nd core. I'd rather watch a movie fluidly with no dropped frames with 2 cores running at 60% than barely managing to do so with 1 core pegged at 100%.