Stuttering playback on the Mac? Try this!

[Fkuehne]

You might have noticed a performance decrease within the last few releases or finally when updating to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

If you did, try this:

* Go to VLC's preferences
* Click on "All" at the bottom of the window
* Navigate to "Input/Codecs" -> "Access modules" -> "MMap"
* Activate "Use file memory mapping"
* Save the settings and restart VLC.

Afterwards, VLC should perform as expected. We will enable this setting by default in future releases of VLC for Mac OS X.

[Adidas1]

I'm sorry but this doesn't fix the issues with Snow Leopard. It slightly improves performance, but HD 720p MKV still stutter, freeze, and generally artifact like crazy. I'm back on 10.5 and the same files run just fine.

[Fkuehne]

Does this MKV contain subtitles? If yes, we know what the cause of the issue is. I hope to have this fixed soon.

[brechtsky3]

Thanks so much, this REALLY helped !

@ Adidas1-- I have snow leopard, and tested with a 1080p ts file, worked beautifully

This version so far (and this is very premature as Ive tried like three or four files) is the best and smoothest since v .86!

[iamse7en]

We will enable this setting by default in future releases of VLC for Mac OS X.

Why wasn't this setting enabled by default in the most recently released 1.02? I was having annoying stuttering issues in the past, but we'll see if I'm having them with v1.02 (and I guess I won't know the difference in having this option enabled, b/c I'm going to enable it anyways right now).


EDIT: nevermind, I thought v1.02 came out tonight.

[ycjhi]

I'm experiencing the stuttering problem with VLC 1.0.2 (Intel 64-bit) and Snow Leopard whenever I play any 720p video in the fullscreen mode. Actually, this tip improved playback speed a little bit. But, the fullscreen playback is still not as smooth as it was with Leopard (10.5). Interestingly, while the video is stuttering, VLC consumes only about 50% of the CPU time. I've also tested some other players (Movist, MPlayer, MPlayer OSX Extended), and observed the same phenomenon in all the cases. To me, it seems this stuttering issue is not a VLC's problem, but a process scheduling issue with Snow Leopard.

[Adidas1]

I'm using plex on 10.5 at the moment to avoid any further stuttering but I'd love to go back to VLC. The poster above me is right - something's not right with snow leopard. Miro, Perian with qt7 and 10, movist... they all stuttered. VLC with the tweaks mentioned in various threads actually came out on top in terms of quality but still dropping frames every couple seconds. Apple let us down on this one methinks.

[djrazor]

the problem still persists, however when I change the screen resolution on my projector from 1600x1200 to 1280x1024 it greatly improves. i'm running a Macbook 2Ghz, 2GB Ram and the Intel GMA 950

[gcubed]

I'm experiencing the stuttering problem with VLC 1.0.2 (Intel 64-bit) and Snow Leopard whenever I play any 720p video in the fullscreen mode. Actually, this tip improved playback speed a little bit. But, the fullscreen playback is still not as smooth as it was with Leopard (10.5). Interestingly, while the video is stuttering, VLC consumes only about 50% of the CPU time. I've also tested some other players (Movist, MPlayer, MPlayer OSX Extended), and observed the same phenomenon in all the cases. To me, it seems this stuttering issue is not a VLC's problem, but a process scheduling issue with Snow Leopard.

Completely agree. I have MBP 13in mid 2009 (2.53Ghz, 9400m, 4gig) and with snow leopard I immediately get stuttering in video only when starting the movie on the 1080p TV but don't experience the same problem when playing it on laptop LCD. The same happens with PLEX and Quicktime. I have a feeling this is a Snlow Leopard issue. Any solutions out there?

P.S. Outputing SPDIF and HDMI signal to my TV in win 7 is absolutely impossible so I'm really hoping this issue of stutter is resolved soon.

[thebulgarian]

yes, i also have issue with MKV files and Subtitles being basically unwatchable in 10.6.1... i hope the fix is soon!

added to that i get an error message which tells me : "audio card not configured, got to: audio midi setup etc... using stereo mode now"
the sound is off for about a second, then the message pops up and hte sound starts to play. i use and m-audio firewire 410, snow leopard and its properly configured.
don't know if this is linked to the above problem or not...

[ATKeys]

I loaded Snow Leopard. Sound skips started. Tested YouTube's video of Kseniya Simonova, the sand artist, fine with Leopard, now with skips; same with a passage from a Shoshtakovich string quartet. Apple's instructional videos had too many skips to be intelligible. I've tried "On en parle" from Switzerland and that, which uses RealPlayer, also has audio skips. I discovered I had VLC's version 0.9.5 before the current download. That got sent to the Trash. Followed Mr. Kühne's recommendation & made the changes he recommended. And I've restarted the Intel iMac.

Nothing's changed. I've done more technically than I have in nine years. I've done a Disk Permissions Repair & upgraded to the BETA version of WMV Flip4Mac for Snow Leopard. Problems occur and problems get fixed. I'll look for version 1.0.3. Will Apple do anything? Apple had to have supplied v. 0.9.5; I didn't download it. Viele danke, and I hope for the best. Whenever. However. I don't want to give up and attempt an uninstall.

[ajmas]

With Snow Leopard Apple made many system architecture changes and tweaks, and in fact the whole point of 10.6 was behind the scenes improvements. It is possible that there are still further tweaks to be made, yet at the same time it would be interesting to see if taking advantage of things such as Grand Central Dispatch would yield any improvements for VLC.

BTW If you are interested in a technical explanation of the changes in Snow Leopard: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/20 ... x-10-6.ars

[theplague]

I don't even have Snow Leopard ("only" Leopard 10.5. the player stutters every now and then.
Really annoying.
A few version back(about before VLC left being beta) there where no problems with this.
Why now?

[addp009]

I used this option, and it definitely improves on the stuttering playback issue I'm having with .dvr-ms files.
However, it looks like my active memory heap grows uncontrollably large. After an hour of video playback, my active heap size grows to 2GB and the system paging a lot.

[t807]

I have a brand new unibody Macbook Pro 2.83ghz with 4gb ram and a 9600GT 512mb video card. I'm still getting the stuttering (although no where close to as bad after trying this fix) and it's extremely annoying. I am however running Snow Leopard right now and don't plan on rolling back. Any idea when a new version of VLC is coming out that will fix this? Or, any idea on when Apple will address this issue? Temporary fix? Let me know...