Stuttery Video Playback with VLC on Macbook Pro

[pmaw3180]

Hi,

I have just bought a brand new MacBook Pro 1.86ghz 80gb and I am mightily impressed.

I have downloaded various codecs (ie to play xvid, .avi's etc) but for some reason when I play them through VLC player the video playback is very stuttery and grainy. Has anyone encountered this problem, if so how to resolve? It is noth the quality of the media files I have because I have seen them played on a friends PC laptop and the quality was very good and sharp.

Perhaps I need some Intel specific codecs... Any suggestions, because I do not doubdt the MacBooks performance, I think it just needs tweaking to play these files correctly.

Thanks!

 

[gekko513]

Did you download the Intel version of VLC? You need to download from the nightly builds as it isn't in official release yet. VLC plays .avi fine on my MacBook. I don't know which codec is used in the .avi's I'm playing, though.

I haven't downloaded any external codecs for playback. Just VLC.

 

[Sdashiki]

dont double post

VLC doesnt use any codecs you may have installed. It uses its own built in stuff.

 

[TAV]

The comment regarding VLC's architecture is spot-on. Here are a few other options and tools for getting various media up and running on your intel mac:


Make sure you are using intel or universal codecs. PPC codecs won't help. Download and install the latest DivX for intel mac beta codec here:

http://labs.divx.com/LatestMacCodec

Then try opening an AVI file in Quicktime and see if that does the trick.

For WMV files, you need to download the latest Flip4Mac component from their site, then open your installer under Rosetta, then unpack the Flip4Mac .pkg file. This will allow the non-universal F4M component to install correctly on your intel machine. It's a work-around, but you might as well do it, as the F4M component for intel isn't even in the small session beta testing phase yet, so it's going to be a while.

Another alternative is to simply convert those WMV files into a format suitable for playback in Quicktime. To do this, I use the free, universal and fast iSquint program. You can download it here:

http://www.isquint.org/

Finally, as an alternative player to Quicktime, I can confirm that the latest nightly build for VLC works very well on my intel machine - much more stable than say, the uni beta of MPlayer.