The VideoLAN Forums

Congratulations on vlc 2.2.1. VLC is very close to becoming my primary video player. Just one thing that is an issue for me. I don't use playlists. Never have. I don't want to see a playlist window ever. I want to double click on a movie and have it play immediately without any other windows popping up or getting in the way and I want window controls on the actual movie player itself. Is there some kind of single window mode or at least disable playlist by default option? Just so the movie window shows up and nothing else. Thanks.

In Preferences -> Interface

Check "Show video within the main window" and Save.

Then click the "Show/Hide Playlist" button at the bottom left of the window next to the stop button.

Now when you open videos it should play in one window without the playlist.

Note, that if your video window did not have any controls or borders before, you had those disabled and you'll need to re-enable them at Preferences -> Video and check "Window decorations", then Save.

Thanks, finally. But I just discovered another problem. VLC is laggy in playing videos. Also sometimes it just doesn't work. I'm trying to play this file and all I get is a green screen. The audio works fine. MplayerX (an old version from 4 years ago) can play the video and audio just fine. Here's the file profile in Invisor Lite:

File
Kind : MPEG-4 File
Size : 1.47 GB (1468245882 bytes)
Created : April 14, 2015 at 7:49 PM
Modified : April 14, 2015 at 8:05 PM

Container
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Apple audio with iTunes info
Codec ID : M4A
Duration : 2h 18mn 16s 977ms
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 1 416 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2011-02-07 18:06:12
Tagged date : UTC 2011-02-07 18:06:12

Video
ID : 2
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 8 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 2h 18mn 16s 913ms
Bit rate : 1 356 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 9 556 Kbps
Width : 960 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Pixel aspect ratio : 1.000
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Frame count : 198927
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.082
Stream size : 1.41 GB (95.8%)
Writing library : x264 core 59
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=8 / deblock=1:-2:-1 / analyse=0x1:0x131 / me=umh / subme=7 / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=12 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=12 / b_pyramid=0 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / wpredb=1 / bime=0 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=1356 / ratetol=1.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=1.00 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=2:1.00 / zones=479,675
Encoded date : UTC 2011-02-07 18:06:17
Tagged date : UTC 2011-02-07 18:07:14

Audio
ID : 1
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 2h 18mn 16s 977ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 56.4 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 66.7 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Frame count : 357321
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 58.5 MB (4.0%)
Encoded date : UTC 2011-02-07 18:06:12
Tagged date : UTC 2011-02-07 18:07:14

Please share the logs.

While it's playing, I click on window > messages > (refresh button). I see a while bunch of "vda debug: frame buffer is empty" lines. If that helps at all. The osx console just says: VLC: Can't find app with identifier com.spotify.client.

Disable hardware decoding.