Which of these players has the lowest CPU usage, or makes use of the GPU the most? My Mid 2011 MBA has the iGPU HD 3000, which shoukd be pretty fast, but in VLC I get CPU usage of about 40-90 %, depending on the movie (all 1080p mkv)
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Which video/movie player for Lion??
- Thread starter Skika
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No 3rd party player is going to have hardware acceleration, at least not good hardware acceleration. I generally find MPlayer superior to VLC for mkv's, though, particularly those with subtitles.
Most mkv's are already in H.264, though, so if you want to take advantage of the hardware acceleration in Quicktime X, remux it to m4v using an app like Subler. That's assuming it's less than high profile level 5, of course...
ETA: And the Intel HD 3000 has never been "pretty fast." Maybe "fast enough."
Movist:
Has the best visual interface and subtitles are smooth. You have to set the ffmpeg codec as default. I have perian installed so don't know if it makes any difference. Problem is when I try to watch certain HD movies, the cpu spikes. Movist is my default for most videos.
VLC: It is UGLY (I had to install a skin http://hirolabs.de/download_vlc_blackpearl.php). I use it to play HD movies and it works great. Make sure you download the latest 64bit version. For some reason I can watch 720p (2GB) movies @ 15% cpu in my Intel X3100 (Macbook).
Has the best visual interface and subtitles are smooth. You have to set the ffmpeg codec as default. I have perian installed so don't know if it makes any difference. Problem is when I try to watch certain HD movies, the cpu spikes. Movist is my default for most videos.
VLC: It is UGLY (I had to install a skin http://hirolabs.de/download_vlc_blackpearl.php). I use it to play HD movies and it works great. Make sure you download the latest 64bit version. For some reason I can watch 720p (2GB) movies @ 15% cpu in my Intel X3100 (Macbook).
I end up going back and forth between MplayerX and VLC. I know VLC will play everything and I usually use it for HD, but I like the controls of mplayer and the fact that it automatically plays the next show in a series. They are both pretty good.
I used to use VLC, but have recently been using MPlayerX.
Both have been extremely stable and I only prefer MPlayerX because of it's more minimal UI.
Unfortunately nothing is playing DTS\DD audio correctly right now under Lion, but that appears to more of an OS issue.
As for the crashes that OP is experiencing; while it could be memory, I would expect that to express itself as kernel panics more often then app crashes. It's more likely that he has some malformed videos. Many of the all-in-one apps are based around ffmpeg and could fail for the same reason.
Both have been extremely stable and I only prefer MPlayerX because of it's more minimal UI.
Unfortunately nothing is playing DTS\DD audio correctly right now under Lion, but that appears to more of an OS issue.
As for the crashes that OP is experiencing; while it could be memory, I would expect that to express itself as kernel panics more often then app crashes. It's more likely that he has some malformed videos. Many of the all-in-one apps are based around ffmpeg and could fail for the same reason.
As others have said, most third party players primarily use software decoding, but there has been some movement to use HW decoding for some formats like H.264. Plex, for example has some limited HW support.
As for the GPU; It's not a gaming part, but I feel that the HD 3000 is plenty fast for the video apps available today (it's not your bottleneck). Assuming that your CPU can keep up, there is plenty of bandwidth to output 1080p video through software rendering. Even my old Mac Mini with a GMA950 has no trouble with 1080p video (assuming the CPU is keeping up).The HD 3000 HW decoding should also be plenty fast for software that utilizes it.
I only have VLC installed and it works great. I watch a lot of movies too and I don't get any crashes
Movist is also a great alternative though. Never had a problem with it on SL. But to me, VLC is always the king.
This. And the fact that all codecs are installed.
This. And the fact that you can set it as default and never have to consider what type of video file you are opening again.
I use MPlayerX for previewing videos mostly and XBMC nightlies for regular video viewing like with MKVs. I use VLC when XBMC screws up. I love the interface XBMC provides for my folders and it has excellent audio support. I don't know why, but MPlayerX has been slightly stuttery ever since I installed Lion. I also have Perian installed, of course.
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Since I upgraded to Lion any video I output to TV stutters (DVI -> scart - *cough* old CRT TV *cough* - on a mid 2007 MPB). It's kind of watchable but incredibly annoying. This seems to be regardless of format/container as well.
Seems to happen regardless of player (VLC/Quitime with Perian/MPlayerX) in Lion and never happened in SL. Has anyone else experienced this?
I only have 2GB ram installed so perhaps it's a matter of Lion wanting to be fed some more. I'll probably try installing 4GB anyway, though.
Seems to happen regardless of player (VLC/Quitime with Perian/MPlayerX) in Lion and never happened in SL. Has anyone else experienced this?
I only have 2GB ram installed so perhaps it's a matter of Lion wanting to be fed some more. I'll probably try installing 4GB anyway, though.
Yet another vote here for VLC. Plays absolutely everything.
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How do you do that? I still find QT is the default for some videos. I'd love to just be able to tell Lion to use VLC for all video files.
Are you putting the Macbook into clamshell mode? When I hook up my Macbook to the TV, I load up the video player, then close the lid so it outputs only to the TV. I think if you have the lid open, it's using up processing power for both screens.
I have a black Macbook C2D 2.0 GHz and it runs various containers up to 720p (1080p - forget it) smoothly on my TV.
BTW, there's an update for MPlayerX v1.0.8 since Aug. 18th.
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Select 'Show Info' for a movie that is not correctly associated. Under file association, select VLC and click apply to all files. You may need to do this once for each file extension (AVI, MKV, MP4...)
What's the difference between MPlayerX and MPlayer OSX Extended? Is one of them updated more frequently? (I notice that only MplayerX is available in the App Store).
Has anybody found one that does 5.1 over HDMI?
VLC is killing me because 5.1 quit working over HDMI after the Lion update. I'm missing my 5.1 audio, 2 channel sucks.
It just needs to play .mkv, .avi, and .mp4 files. Those are the only files I ever use.
VLC is killing me because 5.1 quit working over HDMI after the Lion update. I'm missing my 5.1 audio, 2 channel sucks.
It just needs to play .mkv, .avi, and .mp4 files. Those are the only files I ever use.
Quicktime shutters like crazy on my late 2010 13" MBP, even non-HD files. There are audio-sync issues as well.
At first VLC no longer gave me the "Audio Device" option to use "HDMI-encoded," which I need to use to push audio to my receiver. But it seems to usually give that option again now, so it must have been a codec thing. But even so, thanks to Lion I'm not getting DTS/DD sound out of my MBP anyway no matter what I do.
So far I hate everything about Lion. The audio is just so screwed up across the board, monochrome finder, and my battery life is literally down 40%!
Lion is Apple's answer to Windows Vista.
At first VLC no longer gave me the "Audio Device" option to use "HDMI-encoded," which I need to use to push audio to my receiver. But it seems to usually give that option again now, so it must have been a codec thing. But even so, thanks to Lion I'm not getting DTS/DD sound out of my MBP anyway no matter what I do.
So far I hate everything about Lion. The audio is just so screwed up across the board, monochrome finder, and my battery life is literally down 40%!
Lion is Apple's answer to Windows Vista.