TUAW's Daily Mac App: VLC
Yesterday on the Daily Mac App, we showed you how to bestow QuickTime Player with the ability to play a multitude of formats and codecs, but sometimes even Perian won't cut it, and that's where you can turn to VLC to get the job done.
VLC is a free, open-source, cross-platform multimedia player that we've covered extensively in the past, and for good reason. It'll play almost everything under the sun without requiring any additional codec packs or plug-ins. That means you can literally throw just about any media file you can find at it and marvel as it plays back in a fast and smooth fashion. No fuss -- it just works.
If you like to delve into a myriad of settings and features, VLC comes up trumps. From being able to set playback delay for audio, ironing out those sync issues, to spitting out AC3 or DTS through an optical cable, it's all there in the preferences.
VLC resembles the iTunes Mini Player and, for the most part, the UI is usable and gets out of your way. When you're playing video, you get a familiar disappearing media playback control bar that sinks into the background when not in use leaving you with your media.
VLC is available free from the VideoLAN website, and it's an absolute must download if you ever play non-Apple approved media formats on your Mac.
There are quite a few decent alternatives to VLC available on the Mac. If you've got a favorite, shout out in the comments and tell us why you prefer it over other options.
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Source: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Yesterday on the Daily Mac App, we showed you how to bestow QuickTime Player with the ability to play a multitude of formats and...
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I must give a shout out to Plex. It is the only app on OSX that I know that allows GPU Hardware Acceleration of videos encoded with H.264. I've found this greatly reduces CPU usage so my Macbook Pro's fan doesn't sound like a 767 when I throw 1080p HD Videos at it.
Are there any other video players out there that have hardware acceleration support?
We've adopted VLC in our school to be able to play dvd's from UK and US without changing the zone 5 times and be locked to the last change. But lately VLC doesn't play well with the zones.
June 18 2011 at 7:03 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyQuickTime will always have a special place in my heart, but VLC has been my first choice for year for playing any type of video files, even Apple approved formats. VLC just offers so much more.
June 17 2011 at 6:22 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyToo bad VLC cuts off the last second of every video when you try to play a sequence of videos in a playlist. This seems to be a known bug with no fix. I was planning to use VLC for a screening of ~50 short films last week but this bug made it unusable. My eventual solution? iTunes. Dropped the videos into a playlist, set them to full screen and everything worked fine. Problem solved. VideoLAN needs to get their act together.
June 17 2011 at 6:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI primarily use VLC for movies and my lossless music (.FLAC). I also use Movist for .mkv files, i think movist handles 'scrubbing' of larger video files in a much smoother manner.
June 17 2011 at 5:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyNever got SPDIF passthrough working with VLC on MAC.
MPlayerX works perfectly :)
Can anyone tell me how to disable VLC's hijacking of the keyboard player controls in OS X? It is very annoying when you pause iTunes and the last movie you played in VLC starts playing.
June 17 2011 at 4:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyMovist and MplayerX are my favourites. Movist seems to use the lesser amount of CPU for me.
June 17 2011 at 4:45 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyVLC is my default video player
June 17 2011 at 3:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe best part of VLC is that it's also available for PCs and (now jailbroken-only) iPhones.
MPlayerX is a decent alternative as well, but I've never had any complaints at all about VLC on my mac.
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TUAW (or The Unofficial Apple Weblog) is a website devoted to tips, reviews, news, analysis and opinion on everything Apple.
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