Lack of Manpower May Kill VLC For Mac 398
plasmacutter writes "The Video Lan dev team has recently come forward with a notice that the number of active developers for the project's MacOS X releases has dropped to zero, prompting a halt in the release schedule. There is now a disturbing possibility that support for Mac will be dropped as of 1.1.0. As the most versatile and user-friendly solution for bridging the video compatibility gap between OS X and windows, this will be a terrible loss for the Mac community. There is still hope, however, if the right volunteers come forward."
This would be a great loss (Score:5, Informative)
The DVD player that comes with Apple's computers is rather intolerant of scratches, etc., and will report "Skipping damaged area..." then skip ahead a ridiculous amount. VLC will play fine right through the supposedly damaged segment. Losing VLC for the Mac would be terrible. If I knew anything about programming, I'd think about joining this project.
Re:This would be a great loss (Score:5, Interesting)
I still don't see enough buffering code and SPECIFICALLY buffering controls for users in any media player. :/ (if you don't quickly hit pause and it plays up to where the buffer end is, that can be a problem too)
I frequently play back files which just happen to be close to the bitrate of my wireless connection, why can't I have the program specifically pre-buffer 100mb of data and then play back from the 100mb? Then when the bitrate is higher, it drops to 80 or 50 but when it's lower, it re-fills.
This is pretty straightforward stuff and yet, do we have these kind of controls?
I want this on my PS3 media playbakc, my Xbox 360, Media player classic, GOM, VLC - everything damnit! I'm willing to goddamn wait as long as the end result is a smoother experience!
I live in Australia, youtube and many flash videos here are frankly, bloody annoying, often we open a youtube video here, click play, let it start playing then quickly hit pause so it fills the full buffer
FWIW: I'm not a coder, perhaps this is significantly more complex than it sounds to impliment but damnit it could make many things smoother and simpler.
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Moot (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Moot (Score:5, Funny)
That sounds oddly familiar.
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On the desktop!
It will be the year of Mac on the Desktop. And about time, too!
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And gaming! I predict 2010 will be the year Apple becomes the gaming platform of choice for trust-fund babies, unpublished writers who hang at Intelligentsia and men who tweeze their eyebrows.
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Re:Moot (Score:5, Informative)
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Perian is also a little low on developers [cocoaforge.com], though obviously not as much so as VLC...
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We need tickets about it being broken to fix things.
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Wow, what are you smoking?
Wait, Quicktime is your example of a successful "professional" Apple tool?
You're being sarcastic, right? C'mon, stop playing...
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Apple already owns the online music distribution and playing industry and the high end professional computing industry (programming, design, scientific computing, high performance computing, etc.. basically anyone who needs a computer for serious work)
Wow, what are you smoking?
Depends on what he means by "owns", and ignoring the hyperbole (the "serious work" part is especially egregious, just like when "business" or gamers make the same claim in reverse), he's got a point. The programming one is a bit confusing, but the others are pretty accurate.
Open Source toys like VLC really cannot compete at a professional level with stuff like Quicktime
Wait, Quicktime is your example of a successful "professional" Apple tool?
You're being sarcastic, right? C'mon, stop playing...
If he means QuickTime, then he's correct. Odds are any movie you see and song you hear made its way through QuickTime.
If instead he means the QuickTime Player, then his point really depends on the point of view. From the point of a view
Re:VLC is the linsux of media players (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on what he means by "owns", and ignoring the hyperbole (the "serious work" part is especially egregious, just like when "business" or gamers make the same claim in reverse), he's got a point. The programming one is a bit confusing, but the others are pretty accurate.
No, they aren't. High-performance computing most certainly isn't a strong area for Apple, with Linux being probably the most used platform and other Unix systems and Windows coming somewhere behind. While Macs are certainly used for some scientific modeling and visualisation tasks, I'm not aware of a particularly market share, definitely not to the point of "owning" the market.
In the end, the only item on his list that stands is "design", with a lot of programmers also using Macs nowadays but I wouldn't say they dominate at that either.
you are wrong (Score:5, Informative)
FYI:
Quicktime is more than a player. It is a massive video library (with a larger code base than windows 95) used to power video editing etc. Its OLD and used to be the basis of nearly all video editing software. It has gotten stale and others have replaced it but it was the foundation for digital video for many years and its still around being used for this.
The quicktime file format is the basis of the mp4 file format as well.
It is a solid library with a lot of extendability for its size, age, and complexity - its in C and I've coded for it a little bit... like 10 years ago.
What I see now is alternatives usually built around a single format library with an import/export system added on. This makes those easier to implement while quicktime has been open ended and not tied to any 1 format (other than its own container format) the timecode in quicktime is confusing because its not a video time code but an abstraction.
Basically apple dropped the ball when they didn't open source the library years ago (and they did ask for public input for a short period without much attention given to it) now we have MKV containers and the zombee avi containers and many specialized libraries.
Not much out there as far as I've seen that competes with the power of quicktime. It could have been the framework but it looks like mkv will be the open container and somebody will tie together enough libraries and codecs into a generalized framework--- or we'll just have to jam it all together ourselves. (which may not be any more difficult than trying to understand the old quicktime C API...)
Re:VLC is the linsux of media players (Score:5, Insightful)
> Open Source toys like VLC really cannot compete at a professional level with stuff
> like Quicktime because it has an order of magnitude superior design, usability,
> security and testing behind it.
Is that why people install VLC on MacOS so that they can deal with the formats and
codecs that Apple has chosen to ignore for one bullsh*t reason or another?
Without VLC and ffmpeg, it would be Mac users that are "left out in the cold".
The idea that Quicktime is something that the users of other platforms should covet
is a big fat joke.
Sick (Score:2, Funny)
There's going to be a million and two volunteers now since this is ./'d
Mplayer OSX Extended (Score:5, Informative)
Sad to see VLC struggling, but there's always Mplayer OSX Extended [mplayerosx.sttz.ch] for the mac. Get the extra codec pack and it can play anything!
Re:Mplayer OSX Extended (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a good option for playing videos. But what makes VLC VLC, and not just VC, is the LAN support. VLC can pretty easily be set up as a video server as well as a player. You can't do this [engadget.com] with Mplayer.
Re:Mplayer OSX Extended (Score:5, Interesting)
Sad to see VLC struggling, but there's always Mplayer OSX Extended [mplayerosx.sttz.ch] for the mac. Get the extra codec pack and it can play anything!
Compare 1080p H.264 matroska playback in vlc to mplayer:
on my macbook pro (exactly a year old at this point) vlc plays it without a stutter, mplayer extended will drop frames like an epileptic. Im sure they both drop frames, but VLC does so much more gracefully, resulting in no noticeable distortion, while mplayer extended makes it obvious (and incredibly annoying) to the viewer. Nothing like watching blade runner final cut and being slowly infuriated by those epic scenes being subjected to massive chop and screen tears.
Re:Mplayer OSX Extended (Score:5, Interesting)
The best results I've seen for a sufficiently high bitrate H.264 1080p stream on OS X was by using Media Player Classic Home Cinema running in Windows inside VMware. ~20 fps with tearing and OK audio. Compare to VLC, which was able to play the video at ~24 fps during low motion screens and then just stop updating the picture for a while if decoding couldn't keep up. MPlayer would stop playing altogether if the CPU couldn't keep up. QuickTime + Perian took forever to load the video and then froze when I tried to play it.
In Windows with H.264 hardware decoding disabled the video plays fine. The video also plays fine in Windows (and with lower CPU usage) with hardware decoding enabled, of course. OS X doesn't support hardware H.264 decoding at all on this GPU (Radeon HD 2600). Even if it did, I don't know of any way to use OS X's H.264 hardware decoding support except on files natively supported by QuickTime X.
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Why are you telling me this? I was specifically describing a problem with OS X, which supports accelerated H.264 decoding only on the nVidia GeForce 9400M IGP (as in my MBP)
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Make sure you have selected multithreaded FFmpeg in preferences. A single core of a modern processor is not able to decode 1080p H264 without dropping frames so you'll need the multithreaded option.
A different view from a developer (Score:5, Interesting)
(This message may be seen as inflammatory, but I assure you that it is just my opinion and not particularly anybody else---I don't speak for the projects on which I participate).
Hi.
I am not a developer of VLC, but I am part of the LAME team (that MP3 encoder that a good amount of people use). I see similar problems regarding LAME as those described by the VLC team: lack of continuous power and resources.
Some users just magically think that "oh, this program won't exist anymore, so let's use this other one". The sad thing here is that they are shortsighted in the fact that they, by doing nothing (just receiving the programs), are not giving the incentive for the projects.
What about if the proposed alternative dies a few days from now? The amount of alternatives is finite.
Not only that, but the major players out there all share the same codebase: there are "incestuous" (in a good sene of the word) relations with VLC, xine, and mplayer: the all use, to some extent or another (well, in some cases, to the full extent) some common libraries: ffmpeg, libmp3lame, theora, vorbis, dirac, x264 and so on.
Usually, also, the players also send some feedback to the people writing the libraries and, without them, the libraries would not be as good as they are. And the feedback that developers provide is, not infrequently, in form of patches, or constructive suggestions. Some users, like the one above, just cares less and, honestly, where would you just "grab the extra codec" if they all, come, essentially, from the first place?
If you didn't know, perhaps it is a good reminder to put here that people from the VLC project developed the nice libdvdcss library, which benefited xine and mplayer, while people in the other projects have directly or indirectly benefited the others.
I would not like to have the "Linux desktop" mainstream with a "community" with a person that doesn't want a community. For people that are more altruistic (and that show it, instead of just playing in slashdot all day), I am open to a more open talk.
[Gee, from what I wrote the above, it seems like if I only saw Linux---I actually value the other Unix-like operating systems as much].
I guess that what I meant to say here is: "Talk is cheap. Show me the code. Don't wish the death of what you may proudly use and not even know".
Regards, Rogério Brito.
user-friendly? (Score:3, Informative)
Whoever takes the job, please remove the stupid "anything I want to play gets added to a stupid playlist" thing. When I open a video with QuickTime, it plays that video. If I open another video at the same time, it opens up another QuickTime window.
VLC is more like QuickTime (video player) but it currently acts more like iTunes (media library player).
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VLC has a command line option "--no-playlist-enqueue" that controls that behavior. Under Windows the default action is "Play" which enqueues but there is also an action called "Play with VLC media player" that doesn't. There is another action that enqueues but doesn't play the file passed as the argument. These extra actions are, as usual, accessible through the explorer context menu. I suppose OSX could have a similar behavior.
Here are the command lines for each action:
Play: "...\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe"
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Now if only the flashtards at youtube et al would realize you might want to maximize a video on one screen and touch the keyboard in another window, that the entire world does not grind to a halt just because you're doing your job... and if only they'd le
Re:user-friendly? (Score:5, Informative)
Whoever takes the job, please remove the stupid "anything I want to play gets added to a stupid playlist" thing. When I open a video with QuickTime, it plays that video. If I open another video at the same time, it opens up another QuickTime window.
VLC is more like QuickTime (video player) but it currently acts more like iTunes (media library player).
Have you even bothered to open the preferences? It right there in the Interface pane (simple settings view):
Allow only one instance [x]
Enqueue files when in one instance mode[x]
Just uncheck "Allow only one instance".
Re:user-friendly? (Score:4, Informative)
You are looking at either the Linux or Win versions. Your advice does not apply the OS X version.
VLC OSX does not have checkbox multiple instances.
OS X is UNIX (Score:2)
Why do they need a special OS X build? Shouldn't it build the same way it does on any UNIX?
Re:OS X is UNIX (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly... Apple has been slowly squeezing the Carbon (std. C++ lib set) into non-existence, which means you get to do it in Cocoa (that is, Obj-C). IIRC, there's no 64-bit Carbon love in SL, though the 32-bit Carbon libs should still be happily intact.
There's also (IIRC) Grand Central to contend with when you're dinking around with video, and I doubt that you could find an easy parallel for that when porting in from *nix.
Been way the hell too long (something like 4 years) since I've had to do any serious OSX stuff though, so take all of this with a block of salt.
Re:OS X is UNIX (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly... Apple has been slowly squeezing the Carbon (std. C++ lib set) into non-existence, which means you get to do it in Cocoa (that is, Obj-C).
Objective C / C++ is only required for doing the UI. 99% of your project can remain in C or C++ with only a very thin shim in Obj-C for the UI layer. There is no requirement to move your code base to except for the Mac-specific UI layer.
IIRC, there's no 64-bit Carbon love in SL, though the 32-bit Carbon libs should still be happily intact.
There is no 64 bit Carbon, because it's a relic. Cocoa easily mixes with C code (Obj-C is just C with extra stuff). Unless you're Adobe and you have a huge amount of UI code in Carbon, there is no reason to keep hanging on to it.
There's also (IIRC) Grand Central to contend with when you're dinking around with video, and I doubt that you could find an easy parallel for that when porting in from *nix.
Grand Central Dispatch is not required for video at all. Mac OS X supports the standard POSIX pthreads interface for threading.
GC or the GPU acceleration, both have issues (Score:2)
Mysterious (and ignored) thing is, Adobe won't implement GPU acceleration on Flash beta 10.1 on OS X citing "not stable interface" or "not enough documentation"... Whatever, the reality is, a Mac Mini with NV9400M can play 1080p Flash video with 3% CPU load under Windows Vista/XP/7 but it will choke the CPU (no matter how powerful) on OS X. As far as I understand, GPU accelerated version is either available or soon to be available under x86/Linux too.
Game developers, once interested in GC figured "once you
Re:GC or the GPU acceleration, both have issues (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah. Dang Apple for preventing GrandCentral use anywhere else. [macresearch.org] Imagine how cool it would be if another OS were to pick up the technology and Implement it. [freebsd.org]
Blast Apple and all their closed source stuff. [macosforge.org]
You miss my point (Score:3, Insightful)
For plugins like Flash and high end commercial games, engine conversion, FreeBSD is irrelevant. What I talk about is something which will run under MS Visual Studio based development environment, whatever game developers/plugin developers use.
Of course, FreeBSD will have GC just like they have launchd but it won't really matter to some game developer or a plugin developer like Adobe.
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Why do they need a special OS X build? Shouldn't it build the same way it does on any UNIX?
Because Apple's video and GUI APIs are different then what KDE and Gnome use.
You really can only do "write once, compile everywhere" for libraries, console apps, and X. Once you're tying into the look and feel of an operating system and its core IO systems, you need to have platform specific code.
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Actually I think that VLC has moved to QT for the interface so the GUI should port. The video playback code me be more difficult to deal with but I have looked at the code.
Even if the "Build" is identical and it will never be you still need someone to build and test the software!
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Actually I think that VLC has moved to QT for the interface so the GUI should port
I doubt that QT provides the video and audio abstraction needed. VLC does things like directly use the SPDIF, which is pretty low-level.
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Handbrake (Score:2, Informative)
Let's remember that Handbrake uses VLC for video decoding. No more VLC = no more handbrake.
Really? (Score:5, Informative)
I thought Handbrake uses FFMPEG. Anyway, if Handbrake uses some VLC code then the Handbrake developers will probably continue to maintain that code without necessarily having to maintain VLC as a whole.
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I think they rely on VLC to supply the dvd decryption library, presumably so they don't have to include anti-DRM goodness in their own package.
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In that case, they deserve whatever happens. But realistically CSS isn't changing so that code may not need any maintenance.
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Handbrake doesn't have to use VLC. I think it was just an easy way to get access to the FFMPEG libraries, to require that VLC be installed. Anyway, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard for them to find another way to deal with it.
And I may be wrong, but I think using VLC is a relatively new thing. I don't remember exactly, but back when Handbrake was OSX-only, I think it had the option of using Quicktime to encode movies.
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I'm willing to pay for VLC/Handbrake to be maintained. Dropping support is dumb before pitching to users to pay to keep someone on the job.
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It's clearly unholy (Score:2)
Not disturbing (Score:2)
If enough people are missing a feature in 1.1.0 release, someone will take the source and add it. As for any product and platform, development is a matter of supply and demand. It could be that physical media like DVDs is simply on the way out and most Mac users are happy with Quicktime player to watch H.264 torrents.
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And you'll still be able to use VLC, there just won't be any new versions for a while. Chances are, as grandparent said, somebody else will come along soon enough. I'm glad this article is here because it might generate some interest, and maybe next week we'll get an article saying "VLC for Mac Saved!"
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What i want to know is, how to get MKV encapsulated h.264 to use the hardware decode capability of modern macs? I have a current gen macbook pro which should be able to handle this, only it doesn't unless i rip the mkv file apart and put the h.264 stream into a different container format.
Perhaps because of Perian? (Score:2)
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I like the Matroska container. It's easy, extensible, and frankly it handles just about anything you can throw into it.
Quicktime+Perian handles Matroska poorly. VLC handles it splendidly. That's why I prefer VLC.
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I'll check it out. The problem really doesn't present itself until you're using low-speed storage--either something off of a USB drive or on a slow network. In the past, you effectively had to read the entire file before playing it, so large files would take forever to start playing from e.g. an NFS share (though once they started, you could index into them just fine.)
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Fair enough.
I've assumed that the problem I had was related to this:
http://perian.org/#support [perian.org]
Why does it take so long for MKV to load?
QuickTime expects to know about the entire movie when playing it, but that's not possible with many formats, including MKV and MPEG. Ask Apple to support seeking without an index if you'd like this to go away!
I had hopes that Quicktime X might have removed that restriction, but I think that Perian would have to be recoded to take advantage of it.
Volume Amp is a VLC-only feature (Score:2)
I also have never had issues with playback in VLC where QT+Perian did any better.
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I also have never had issues with playback in VLC where QT+Perian did any better.
I've had some instances of that. On the other hand i've had instances where VLC won't play something properly that Perian will. Good points about the volume, though, and I think it's great that VLC is around. When it's needed, it is nice to have around and I hope they find at least one developer.
OS X needs VLC (Score:2, Informative)
I think seeing VLC die on the Mac would do much more harm than the death of the Windows version. There is plenty of wonderful video programs that allow you to easily tweak what filters and codecs you use, and pretty much can support any codecs you want. MPC-HC comes to mind as the most versatile. VLC is still useful for formats that you don't use very much - like *.flv, or videos that may not work for whatever reason in another video program.
However, on the Mac, there are far fewer options. A few days ago,
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Have you tried the "apply to all files of this type" in the Get Info window? AFAIK this is how you re-associate a file extension to a new program.
As for Quicktime's formats, try Perian [perian.org]: it is a codec pack for QuickTime (a la Directshow) which integrates ffmpeg, MKV, and a few other formats.
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I couldn't get OS X to use VLC by default. Selecting "open with" VLC ALWAYS only works for that single file, not the file type, despite it saying so.
To set a default application for a file type in OS X, you do the following:-
Right click on any MKV file and choose 'Get Info'
In the 'Open With' section, choose VLC
Click the 'Change All...' button underneath.
All MKV files will now open by default in VLC
Re:OS X needs VLC (Score:4, Insightful)
So, basically, you're mad that it won't play your pirated movies out of the box? I've got karma to burn, so time to feed the trolls.
Yeah, I'm going to assume that you really have no idea how the encoder/decoder market works or video production in general. Basically, there are companies that create codecs like DivX and then require payment to encode and distribute videos using their codec because of patents. In order for Apple to ship DivX, they would have to license DivX from DivX. Why should apple pay the licensing fee when they can direct users here: http://www.divx.com/en/mac [divx.com] and the user can download and install for free? I mean the last time I dealt with Windows I remember having to go and fetch the DivX Codec. And the last time I set up a new Mac, QuickTime popped up when it could find the Codec, knew what kind of file it was, and provided a link to the Divx site to go download it. All of this has to do with Licensing. It's really more of a legal issue than a technical one. So how is software licensing and patents preventing them from shipping every codec known to man Apple's fault again? Because unlike a lot of F/OSS projects, Apple can't be 100% based out of Hungry or France to circumvent these licensing restrictions. The do business in the United States and other countries that do recognize and enforce these copyright treaties. Technically, downloading and using VLC and FFMPEG in the United States constitutes infringement on various Codec patents, but that's a topic for another thread and another day. Also I would check on Windows. If it shipped with DivX, chances are that was added by the PC vender in a 3rd party deal, not by Microsoft. (Actually I don't pay attention to who is licensing what these days).
MKV isn't a format, it's a container. Just like .MOV is a container as is .AVI. The quality inside a .MKV, .AVI, or .MOV is all dependent upon the compression and codecs used not the container format. And the last time I tried playing MKV files, the program took up WAY too many system resources. The only place that I've seen MKV as a popular format is with Azurus/Vuze. In fact, I've never seen it used outside of Vuze. Occasionally you'll see it in a torrent, but they are mostly DivX/Avi.
The fact that macs can't play Blu-Ray or HD-DVD has to do with the fact that Apple doesn't ship any models with said player. MAC LACKS THE HARDWARE NEEDED IN ORDER TO READ EITHER FORMAT That has nothing to do with Quicktime and Codecs. When I worked in video production, nobody was adopting either optical format. It was clear to many of us that Optical Media was going the way of the floppy disk and this was in 2003. By the time HD-DVD or Blu-Ray won the format wars, it would be too late, we'd see everything delivered via a digital stream. The only question was, is it going to be an iTunes like store where you buy the item to a set top box/hard drive or whether it was going to be via streaming like Hulu or Netflix. So far it looks like there is a market for both. But time will tell.
And I see a lot of people electing to skip the Blu-Ray player in favor of a media PC/Mac hooked up to their TV and streaming Netflix or Hulu to their TV. I've been using a Mac MIni for this purpose since 2005. I know I have. To me, the extra quality for twice the price of a DVD plus the cost of the player isn't worth it to me. I'll put up with watching my TV shows from Hulu when I have extra time at my connivence, even if the quality isn't the same as on HD. It' good enough for me and plenty of other people too.
Now, I have to say that I'm generally happy with Quicktime X. Quicktime had been languishing for years and this was a much needed up date. It runs faster and smoother than the previous versions.
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Perian adds all of those codecs that you claim is "not easy" to add support for. A few clicks and it's installed. Log out and back in again at the installer's suggestion (not essential) and the job is done.
Not sure what your issue is with HD h.264 content - works just fine for me (HD files created from XDCAM HD source material, YMMV).
Divx support is easily added via perian, or using the standalone DivX installer from their main website - not sure how you didn't find that.
To force a change to stick regarding
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I know it doesn't do hardware acceleration (not supported at all in OS X yet) but I used to shoot and edit 1080i material (circa 2007/8) in XDCAM HD and it works just fine, and that's the XDCAM HD raw, AIC, H.264 and HDV formats.
The mpeg2 codec for quicktime costs extra from Apple (license issue, even though the DVD player app that ships with OS X plays mpeg2 already, crazy) - Windows does not come with native mpeg2 playback either for the same license reason.
Hardware accelerated video is a relatively new p
almost everything you've posted is wrong (Score:2)
With Perian installed (have you been living in a cave?) Quicktime handles every AVI, MPG, FLV, and MKV file I've thrown at it in years. Quicktime Player in Snow Leopard doesn't think it can open MKV files, but that's why you don't remove Quicktime Player 7 (there's an option for this in the upgrade, because QP7 does things the new QP can't.)
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Thanks. I'm not a Mac user. I did do some google searching for codecs but didn't come across that. I'll try it.
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Perian+Quicktime is awful for Matroska. Really, I wouldn't bother. See the first FAQ under http://perian.org/#support [perian.org]
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For some links:
http://www.divx.com/en/software/mac/divx [divx.com]
http://www.perian.org/ [perian.org]
googling "mac video codecs" has perian at number 2, xvid at number 3, 3vix at number 8 and WMV at number 9.
Job Market... (Score:2)
I suspect they will find more development help when the job market improves (hopefully soon)... :-/
I'll help! (Score:5, Informative)
I wanted to respond directly to the person who put this post up, but I don't want to register for yet another forum.
I'll gladly help develop for the project. My knowledge in video and audio processing is very weak (I took a class on it, but I didn't really put too much work into it), but my skills in C and C++ are pretty good (but not expert). I'm also pretty well-versed in Java, though it's been a while since I needed to whip it out. Finally, I'm slowly, but surely, learning Objective-C.
Please e-mail me at the address listed here. I don't want to see this die! I just migrated over to OS X and find this app extremely helpful, especially from my use of it in Windows.
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Sorry to respond to my own post, but if you feel compelled to help too, reply to this! It'd be pretty cool to get a team going. -mrc
Re:I'll help! (Score:5, Informative)
I submitted the story. I'm not a member of the dev team, but give the popularity of VLC on this platform it absolutely astounded me this issue had not appeared on a major news site yet.
The forum thread linked from the article suggests you present yourself to the developer mailing list.
here [videolan.org] is a list of all the videolan project's mailing lists - I believe the one they want you to contact them through is vlc-devel [videolan.org]
Thank you for offering, i'd do so myself if i were not utterly sub-novice.
AbiWord faces the same issue (Score:5, Interesting)
There are very few Open Source developers for OSX. Unfortunately we, AbiWord, have exactly the same issue. We *almost* had version 2.8 ready for OSX but we lost our lead OSX developer and there is no one to replace him. Rather than delay 2.8, we simply went ahead with 2.8 for Linux and Windows.
Re:AbiWord faces the same issue (Score:4, Informative)
I have the same problem with the LiVES project. Over 3 years ago, I managed to compile the sourcecode for OSX/Darwin, it took a lot of fiddling around, but it worked. I excitedly posted the news on the website and mailing lists, but no OSX users seemed interested. Since then, the code has changed a lot, fixes were made for it to compile on IRIX and Solaris.
Recently somebody posted a forum message noting how easy it now is to compile under OSX [sourceforge.net]. I again posted this news, and asked if somebody could kindly compile it and send me a link to the resulting binary. Since then...nothing. Hence I have come to a conclusion about OSX users...well, I will let you guess what it is.
Mark parent "troll" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have to agree with the parent. I stopped using VLC in preference for MPlayer. I am always amazed when VLC can't play something but MPlayer can, even though they both use FFMPEG for playback.
Eu Contraire (Score:2)
My experience with VLC is that it has handled everything i've thrown at it admirably, with the few exceptions being horribly corrupted beyond recognition.
Mplayer will open and play more, but suffers horrible A/V desynch which, despite months of soliciting and applying arcane fix ideas, has remained persistent.
VLC is currently the only playback solution which can handle HD H.264 matroska without a major malfunction, and additionally has the highest quality video rendering, with more detail, smoother pans, an
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Yeah, VLC isn't perfect, but I much prefer it to MPlayer. Still, I'm not terribly worried. It's not like they're going to come to your house and uninstall whatever version you have now. And their big announcement is surely a way of getting some new developers to stand up and help out. Some new eyes on the code could be a good thing, at any rate. Presumably whoever does take over will have plenty of enthusiasm and a lot will get done.
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I seriously don't know what you're talking about. I use VLC all the time, and find it impressive how wide a variety of formats it will play without any problems. It plays damned near everything and never crashes. The UI might not be completely Mac-like, but it's not as horrible as some ports.
Overall, I'll be unhappy if VLC development for OSX stops.
Re:Could it be possible that noone cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Show me the reference in the story of Adam and Eve that states it's an Apple. Why can no one realize that there is no such thing as the forbidden apple from the Garden of Eden.
Which story? It's not in the original, but it is in Paradise Lost and it's certainly made its way into popular culture enough that people recognize the reference.
VLC is an amazing, gigantic success on OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you really joking? VLC is the most successful open source project on Mac, forever. It even beats Firefox.
Here is a top sw downloads listing from absolutely general user focused download site: http://www.macupdate.com/popular/ [macupdate.com]
VLC has also become de-facto remote controlled Apple OS X software for iPhone/iPod users. Those are the true "walled garden" lovers/ignorers.
VLC should look at their community, IRC channel, developer public comments for why on earth their developer level dropped to zero with such amazing success. Imagine you are a multimedia developer, is there anything more visible and easy to contribute than VLC? Get a CVS pwd, start showing off with your coding capabilities... Really interesting... I suspect some bad treatment to Mac users/Developers going on. BTW, they should look at pure numbers, not some troll/idiot comments from some download sites or blogs. They are currently de facto standard multimedia player on OS X. They should figure this fact if not already.
PS: Not a big VLC fan really while it saves us all the time at TV. I personally use Coreplayer OS X which is really really unpopular and commercial application which does amazing things like playing 720P HD/H264 on G4 1.42 Ghz.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you really joking? VLC is the most successful open source project on Mac, forever. It even beats Firefox.
Here is a top sw downloads listing from absolutely general user focused download site: http://www.macupdate.com/popular/ [macupdate.com]
VLC has also become de-facto remote controlled Apple OS X software for iPhone/iPod users. Those are the true "walled garden" lovers/ignorers.
VLC should look at their community, IRC channel, developer public comments for why on earth their developer level dropped to zero with such amazing success.
Because "true Apple lovers" are mostly either multimedia designers, artists, writers or just ordinary users with more money than sense, and not down-in-the-trenches C/C++ developers? It will really be interesting to see how this story with VLC develops. I bet VLC would be even more successful on Mac if they charged $39.99 for it.
Actually, I think this would be a good point to make with the developers: create a "VLC Gold" edition for Mac, which will be basically the same with some fancy Apple-like UI tweak o
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I bet VLC would be even more successful on Mac if they charged $39.99 for it.
Hm. If I were a freelance Mac developer, and thought you were right, I'd consider supporting a commercial version. Of course, anybody could take my source code and compile it without paying me, but I'll bet a lot of people would pay either because they think I deserve the money or they just don't know any better.
Not from what I've seen - iPhone more likely (Score:4, Insightful)
Because "true Apple lovers" are mostly either multimedia designers, artists, writers or just ordinary users with more money than sense, and not down-in-the-trenches C/C++ developers?
I guess you must not be a "down-in-the-trenches" developer either. Or else your head is so far down in the "trenches" you have not been to any kind of technical conference, where a large number of people have mac laptops (including many Windows technical conferences).
So where have all of the Mac developers gone? I wonder what massive upswing in calls for Mac capable developers might have happened in the last few years that might have drawn people off the project?
Basically, to my mind you need look no further than the iPhone to figure out what has taken the wind out of many small projects in regards to Mac development.
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Re:Oh fuck no (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not at all a fan of iTunes, but your post is totally full of false information!
Hard to find something that would burn CDs--sounds like you're talking about an all-in-one program? because it's built into the operating system. It's built into iTunes. The most famous and longlived 3rd party program is Toast. Can install commandline tools as well.
The reason iTunes has a library interface is that...that's the entire point of itunes! If you just want to play a media file once, use Quicktime/vlc/mplayer/Audion/etc. Secondly on this note, iTunes by no means compels you to either consolidate your files under its library or rename your existing files. The directory names are hardly cryptic??
I do, however, agree that losing vlc would be too bad, because I fount it usually worked better than mplayer on the Mac.
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I never found these all-in-one programs any good, perhaps because they are all modeled on iTunes. Quicktime is another piece of absolute rubbish that Apple continues to peddle to the masses for some unknown reason. Before my Mac died an u
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WRONG! THE entire point of itunes is to be able to sync your iphone, download and install apps etc.
*head explodes*
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Make a burn folder. Drop files in burn folder. Put in blank [CD|DVD]. Hit Burn.
I've had my mac since 2006 and it has always had the ability to burn discs built in.
I'm sorry the world has moved on from storing music in [artist]_[album]-[track#]-[trackname].mp3 but metadata is a wee bit more handy and convenient for sorting music collections and playlists.
Re:Oh fuck no (Score:5, Insightful)
But these wiseguys don't realise that I'd much rather deal with files that I can recognise by their filename, copy and move them with the well known 'cp' and 'mv' commands rather than having their craptastic software try to manage it all.
Step 1: Tell iTunes not to manage my library.
Step 2: Drag the 30GB "music" folder from the fileserver onto iTunes and wait for it to index everything.
Step 3: Have easy access to all my music, with not a file moved or renamed.
There are plenty of reasons why you might not like iTunes, but if you're 'leet enough not to like the way it handles your files, then you're 'leet enough to tell it not to.
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Re:Oh fuck no (Score:4, Informative)
But these wiseguys don't realise that I'd much rather deal with files that I can recognise by their filename, copy and move them with the well known 'cp' and 'mv' commands rather than having their craptastic software try to manage it all.
The feature you speak of can be turned off. Your music can be in one place or as many places as you like (even on removable storage). Most people, however, like the convenience of having all their music in one place which is managed automatically. "Most people" makes for a reasonable default. I also find it odd you categorize apple's naming scheme as "cryptic" given the scheme is artist/album/track, the filenames of which are not renamed as you claim. While my files are in different folders now, all of them retain the same filenames. Also, iTunes store's music no longer has DRM.
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I'm sure y
Re:Does VLC really have any advantages over Perian (Score:2)
Seriously, with Perian you can pretty much play any video that plays in VLC in QuickTime, which also means that you can integrate it into all the other OS X apps(such as iTunes, iDVD etc). With VLC you are pretty much stuck using the VLC video player, which has a horrendous interface....
try opening any large matroska file in quicktime, call me in a few days when it loads under perian. Until the perian team can hack their way around that little problem their plugin will not measure up unfortunately.
It's a great idea, but it's not quite there yet, even though it performs admirably for smaller files and I do have it installed : )