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Which video player do you use on macOS?

Which video player do you use on macOS?

  • Quicktime

    Votes: 6 14.0%

  • VLC

    Votes: 15 34.9%

  • Elmedia

    Votes: 13 30.2%

  • Other (pls specify with a post)

    Votes: 9 20.9%
  • Total voters
    43
N

nshinka

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 4, 2020
30
5
I've got a fresh install of macOS, and I was wondering which video player you guys reckon is the best to install?

Quicktime is good for .mp4, .mov etc, but when it comes to other formats like .mkv & .mp4 it doesn't work. I know there used to be a Quicktime plugin that gave it support for these formats, however that's been abandoned by the developers ages ago. VLC does the job, but I've always found it to be kinda clunky.

What do you guys use? And what would you recommend? I'm open to both free & paid options.
 
ffmpeg

It plays more formats than VLC on my vintage hardware. I still have to learn how to disable subtitles etc. but I like it better already.
 
IINA looks nicer and more polished than VLC, I'll check it out. Thanks guys!
 
Quicktime Player uses less resources (CPU, RAM) than other players.

The main reason I use something else is if Quicktime Player fails playback. My first choice would be VLC.
 
I wonder why Apple doesn't make Quicktime support all formats properly like IINA or VLC. I know AVI is a competitor format, but making users all download a third party app to watch videos doesn't really fit with the "it just works" philosophy.
 
When they rewrote the Quicktime Player in Cocoa for 10.6 Snow Leopard, they said it will be a plugin friendly architecture to support future codecs. Sadly, that didn't materialize.

Besides, *.avi is more or less dead, isn't it? It's more about *.mkv these days …
 
nshinka said:
I wonder why Apple doesn't make Quicktime support all formats properly like IINA or VLC.
Click to expand...

It depends upon what you mean with “format”. AVI and MKV are container formats (like MP4) and contain various types of media codecs.

One of the benefits of QuickTime X at the time was hardware acceleration, resulting in much more efficient encoding and decoding. Availability of hardware acceleration depends on the integrated or dedicated GPU the computer has as well as the codecs that GPU supports. The MP4 format with hardware accelerated codecs provided a clear benefit, so for Apple there was not much of a point in adding support for non-accelerated codecs; it was just not the way forward.

Nowadays there are other codecs for which hardware acceleration is available, so I suppose Apple should consider at least adopting VP8 and VP9 in its media frameworks, QuickTime and Safari. So far, Apple has stuck with H.264 and H.265.
 
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I use VLC primarily. It works well and its open source which gives me some measure of confidence that it is not spyware in disguise.
 
I also think it integrates much better into the overall look & feel of macOS.

Handling has always felt a little bit out of place with VLC on a Mac.
 
I have tried to download IINA twice, once from its site, and the other via MacUpdate, and in both cases, got this message (and did not proceed to save):
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2020-05-17 at 12.40.58 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2020-05-17 at 12.40.58 PM.png
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It’s a disc image - it could contain something suspicious. Just as any thumb drive or other storage media ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But if you got it from the developers site, it should be okay.
 
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honestone33 said:
Don't get such messages with VLC. I'll stick with it for now. It has never failed me.
Click to expand...
Your screenshot looks like a standard browser warning for downloaded files of certain file types. As long as VLC comes also in a *.dmg, you should be presented with the same warning.
What browser do you use?
 
Nütztjanix said:
Your screenshot looks like a standard browser warning for downloaded files of certain file types. As long as VLC comes also in a *.dmg, you should be presented with the same warning.
What browser do you use?
Click to expand...
That's a dumb message from Chrome, a browser that comes in a DMG.
 
  • Haha
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