The VideoLAN Forums

Hey guys,

Upgraded my MacBook 2Ghz to Snow Leopard and having problems displaying HD files full screen on my second monitor (TV), the resolution of which is 1920 x 1200.

Now I know my macbook only has the intel shared memory graphics piece of s*** HOWEVER on regular Leopard, VLC would play HD .mkv files quite happily in full screen on the 2nd monitor. Now its really stuttery - as I say these are the same files that were fine a week ago before the upgrade. When not in full screen, the files play smoothly.

If I turn down the resolution of my second monitor (to 1280 x 800), VLC copes just fine in full screen again, but I don't want to sacrifice the resolution of an expensive monitor just for this - everything else, software wise, works happily in full 1920 x 1200 resolution.

Any ideas?! I thought Snow Leopard was designed to improve performance on lower spec machines?

Thanks for an awsome video player anyway guys - no doubt this is 99% Apple's cock up!

I have a MacBook C2D with 2,16GHz and Snow Leopard installed since 1 1/2 weeks.
I always used 1280x720 with Tiger and Leopard on my Panasonic 37'' FullHD-LCD, so the macbook don't need to upscale the 720p video to 1080p for the TV.
1080p mkv-files don't play properly on my MacBook, so i don't need 1920x1080 (1080p).
I think 1080p resolution only makes sence when 1080p videos are played.

Since Snow Leopard i use 1344x756 with Overscan turned on, because the screen fits better than with the 720p profile.

What is your CPU usage showing when you are playing at 1920 x 1200 on the second screen? Also, is the other screen showing the desktop or blank?

I have the same problem. Please note that this problem doesn't happen for me when I play movies on the 1280x800 MacBook LCD. It happens when I watch movies (regardless of the codec and resolution) on my 42" 1080p HDTV as the second monitor. It is fine if I watch movies in the window mode; but, I have the same problem as dannyr7 reported if I play the movies in the full-screen mode. I tested QuickTimeX with the movie files encoded in H264 among the same test set, and it worked just fine. I think maybe I need to try Perian.

FYI, I clean installed Snow Leopard three days ago, and tested both 32-bit and 64-bit builds of VLC 1.0.2. MacBook 2.0Ghz, 2GB RAM, 320GB Momentus7200.3 HDD.