The VideoLAN Forums

Hi Guys! How can you run multiple instances of the same programme in OSX. I want to play two or three video files and streams in three seperate windows of VLC. I do it in windows; but cannot find a way to do the same in OSX.

It should work if you start from terminal

No. Launching from terminal vlc does not open a new instance of the programme. There must be a way of running multiple copies of the same programme. I can run two different versions as two different applications but not multiple instances of the same version vlc.

Yea it does, I tried it right now
I'm recieving a UDP stream while playing movie foo and bar at the same time.
I'll make a screen...
http://bartypotter.no-ip.org/~simon/stuff/vlcscreen.png

ain't that exactly what he is asking for?

I wonder if Simon has run two instances of vlc from same folder or from different folders. When I tried; I used two different terminal windows and browsed to the same vlc folder and used command 'open vlc.app'. When I did the same thing in a different terminal window it simply flashed the already running vlc window.

I think you shouldn't use the open command, instead do like this: I did this with the same copy of VLC in 2 different terminal windows
and instead of writing /path/to/movie.avi you can just drag the movie to the terminal window, much faster.

Hi,
I tried using the commands via terminal, but could not open a 2nd instance of VLC.
Kept getting the error: option rt-offset does not exist
Is there a useful guide somewhere as to how to use terminal?
(VLC Version 0.8.2, OS X 10.3.9)
Many thanks,
Peter.

This one is for linux but OSX and linux are very similar on the basics.
http://www.linuxcommand.org/

Don't hesitate to ask if you get any problems

EDIT: when he says anything about /home/username you go to /Users/username
[That will make sense soon ]

Thanks for that Simon - am now able to run several instances of VLC, and even able to send rudimentary instructions from Applescript to control and synchronise them.

Hope it's OK if I follow this up with another question: when I try to run more than 2 video streams on my Powerbook, they begin to look a little jerky, frames are dropped, and sometimes one of them seems to stall for a few seconds. (I'm not just trying to run multiple videos for kicks, but the project I am running requires analysis of multiple videos simultaneously.)

Most of the sources I have been using are Video_TS folders that I have created, although I have also tried it with .mp4 and .dv files.
I have also tried running one stream in Quicktime, another in Apple's DVD Player, and the 3rd in VLC, but no matter what I do, I can't seem to get 3 running smoothly.

Is there anything I can do to improve performance? Or have I reached the limit of my system's capabilities? (Powerbook G4, with 1GB RAM, running video from 3 sources: Firewire 800 LaCie drive, internal HDD, and DVD drive.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

You have reached the limit of you G4s capabilities. It's as simple as that. Don't use a powerbook for things like this .

Do you still finding a solution for this problem?

Thanks to the help of many people on this forum and others, I found satisfactory solutions to the problems. I was able to run 3 video streams on a G4 if I did the following:
1. Copied the DVD to the internal HDD and ran it with DVD player
2. Imported the other 2 streams with iMovie to create a series of .DV files which I then built into 2 Quicktime movies (each 40-60GB) on a LaCie drive with a firewire 800 connection

I only ended up using VLC as a last resort because of the difficulties in controlling it with applescript, the main ones being:
1. Difficulty in reading / interpreting the time on the VLC player - I had to read the time on the slider, read which VOB file was playing, make assumptions about how long each VOB was, etc, etc. and then factor in a conversion ratio depending on what format of video was playing. There has to be an easier way!
2. Difficulty in controlling the player - IF ONLY I had been able to direct VLC to jump to a specific time. In the end, what I had to do was use System Events to direct a series of clicks to jump to the beginning of a certain VOB, then fast forward / reverse until the track was within 20 seconds of the desired time, then play for a few seconds until the time was spot on. Again, this should really be a whole lot easier.

Although the project has now come to a close, I would still like to know if anyone has better solutions to this problem. On the other hand, if this is as good as it gets, and anyone would like some snippets, I would be more than happy to help.

And by the way, in the end I opted for an Intel iMac, and it didn't seem to flinch no matter how many video streams I asked it to play!