The VideoLAN Forums

I've been following on this thread for a while, I also own a Macbook pro, last generation 2.4 ghz 17 inch with Geforce 8600M 256mb

This problem mostly with x264/mkvs, especially the HD 1080p is just how apple's stuff was poorly implimented... let me explain

Perian no doubt is a great tool, but because of the limitations with the Quicktime Player itself, it results in issues with parsing video (the developer explained about it on his homepage), but what is actually worse and its probably the Achilles heel for perian with x264 is that quicktime supports absolutely no hardware acceleration with h264, thus it all relies on CPU power, and as much as perian tries (Dunno about apple's native drivers how they work with their own h264), it chugs especially on scenes that requires more bandwidth. Part of that problem is all on OSX and how quicktime uses resources for h264.
On a side note I think perian 1.0 runs x264 better than the latest version, and it also doesn't penalize Apple Quicktime Movie trailers 1080p/Apple TV

I guess on how Videolan and the other players work, they rely on CPU power as well, though Videolan is the best program I can try out to play the videos remotely sastifactory....
One option i set up so i can get the video to play back smoothly is to go to VLC's preferences, click on input/codecs, go down to other codecs, then to FFMPEG, click on advanced tab (located at the bottom left) to open more options, go to skip the loop filter for h264, i set it to nonkey, and so far its working fine, you can play with it around, just note that on all the quality turns to crap

Strange consider how stuff like WMVHD 1080p even runs fine with OSXplayer and quicktime using their drivers.

Some examples, most 720p plays fine with quicktime or videolan, 1080ps usually have the problem cause they chug alot on scenes that takes up high bandwidth.

The only solution i can find with my macbook pro, unfortunately is to install windows using their klite pack, because this has the geforce 8600 use graphics acceleration, and thus i get no drops at all even with 1080p and faster seeking with WMP, sucks I know, but all i could think of.

But another problem I got with windows WMP with klite is how there's screen tearing and vsync issues when outputing from DVI port to my TV set :/ oh well i guess there is no end to sastifying someone who wants to view these formats.... conversion anybody? I never done the MKV to mp4 but I'm this close to try it out due to fustrations :>

Let me get this straight. almost all files with which we have seen this issue have been made with OLD mkvmerge versions. We can play them if we ignore the SeekHead, but that's not really right (you loose chapters, attachments and all that sort of stuff). I have had 0 problems with mkv files created with mkvmerge versions post-April 2008.

I now have the same problem as well. Before upgrading to 0.9.2 I was able to play 720p MKV files without any issues. Since upgrading I can get almost completely through a movie but then it just stops with about 20-30 minutes left (before the exact same movie would play fine). No error messages, no crash, no nothing...just the video dies. It's getting very frustrating.

what can I do?

Let me get this straight. almost all files with which we have seen this issue have been made with OLD mkvmerge versions. We can play them if we ignore the SeekHead, but that's not really right (you loose chapters, attachments and all that sort of stuff). I have had 0 problems with mkv files created with mkvmerge versions post-April 2008.

Also, I hate to rock the boat, but just using 0.9.3 and 0.8.6b on the same machine, has anyone noticed that seeking through a file is much, much slower on 0.9.3. My dual-core cpu spikes to 90-110% for about 30 seconds when seeking at any point in a .mkv whereas 0.8.6b handles it instantly - no spike at all. Weird.

IMO VLC for OS X has deteriorated sharply with the last few releases, especially the PPC build, and I don't see that improving.

I have to agree. VLC has gotten fatter and fatter (and buggier), taxing CPUs more than ever before. Your computer is just not fast enough to do everything it is being asked to do. That is why rolling back to a simpler version of VLC helped.

It's quite simple though. x264 encoded video is simply CPU intensive to decode. If you cannot, don't whine, but buy a faster computer or don't play the videos (/seek alternative versions).

Videolan - VLC media player
Derk-Jan Hartman
Developer

Hello I recently stumble upon this Thread while having trouble with Playing 1080p mkv video on VLC version 1.0.2 on my Macbook Pro 2.6 ghz 4 gb ram 8600M GT 512mb.

While looking around I found that you can change how VLC opens MKV files, in the pref>input/codecs>Demuxers>Matroska. one of the issues were with long load times on big mkv files. Their (VLC forums') solution was to untick the preload Directory box, which didn't solve the problem, so I started playing with the preferences. I found if I unchecked all the boxes except for "seek based on percent not time" the video plays flawlessly, perhaps not flawlessly but it doesn't crash!

Please tell me if this has worked for you, or what prefs did you change so that it works, Thanks

Hello I recently stumble upon this Thread while having trouble with Playing 1080p mkv video on VLC version 1.0.2 on my Macbook Pro 2.6 ghz 4 gb ram 8600M GT 512mb.

While looking around I found that you can change how VLC opens MKV files, in the pref>input/codecs>Demuxers>Matroska. one of the issues were with long load times on big mkv files. Their (VLC forums') solution was to untick the preload Directory box, which didn't solve the problem, so I started playing with the preferences. I found if I unchecked all the boxes except for "seek based on percent not time" the video plays flawlessly, perhaps not flawlessly but it doesn't crash!

Please tell me if this has worked for you, or what prefs did you change so that it works, Thanks

Hello I recently stumble upon this Thread while having trouble with Playing 1080p mkv video on VLC version 1.0.2 on my Macbook Pro 2.6 ghz 4 gb ram 8600M GT 512mb.

While looking around I found that you can change how VLC opens MKV files, in the pref>input/codecs>Demuxers>Matroska. one of the issues were with long load times on big mkv files. Their (VLC forums') solution was to untick the preload Directory box, which didn't solve the problem, so I started playing with the preferences. I found if I unchecked all the boxes except for "seek based on percent not time" the video plays flawlessly, perhaps not flawlessly but it doesn't crash!

Please tell me if this has worked for you, or what prefs did you change so that it works, Thanks

THANK YOU!!!!!! I've been looking everywhere for a fix. Please make this post a sticky for everyone. Mkv's actually work like they're supposed to now. Thank you so much dude.

Hello I recently stumble upon this Thread while having trouble with Playing 1080p mkv video on VLC version 1.0.2 on my Macbook Pro 2.6 ghz 4 gb ram 8600M GT 512mb.

While looking around I found that you can change how VLC opens MKV files, in the pref>input/codecs>Demuxers>Matroska. one of the issues were with long load times on big mkv files. Their (VLC forums') solution was to untick the preload Directory box, which didn't solve the problem, so I started playing with the preferences. I found if I unchecked all the boxes except for "seek based on percent not time" the video plays flawlessly, perhaps not flawlessly but it doesn't crash!

Please tell me if this has worked for you, or what prefs did you change so that it works, Thanks

THANK YOU!!!!!! I've been looking everywhere for a fix. Please make this post a sticky for everyone. Mkv's actually work like they're supposed to now. Thank you so much dude.