Hi,
same problem here with absolutely every video I have (avi, mpg.... with many different codecs). I intensively use 10s and 1min skipping, both forward and backward, from the keyboard. VLC 0.9.x seem very slow compared to 0.8.6, so slow that I actually never use 0.9.x.
Now, what is "very slow" (0.9.x) compared to "almost instantaneous" (0.8.6) ? I estimate the mean skipping time in 0.9.8 to 150 ms, but it can be much more (0.5-2 sec) or even fail on some videos, whereas 0.8.6 has no problem and is still blazingly fast. Apart from those problematic movies, 150ms lag time is way too long. First the application seems unresponsive when it comes to skipping (I remind you that I use skipping all the time, but it's certainly not the case for all users). Second, you cannot search for a specific scene in the movie by keeping the key pressed: in 0.9.8, video is stuck on the current frame when you press the key, and resumes when you release it. Nothing is displayed in-between not even the timestamp, so that's completely useless. By contrast, in 0.8.6 you can see ALL the frames you're supposed to see... well even more because scanning is not cancelled immediately when you release the key
Additionally, both versions use 10% CPU when playing the movie. 0.8.6 eats up 30% CPU when scanning and displaying all the frames it should whereas 0.9.8 eats up
45% CPU for scanning and displaying nothing (or just 1 or 2 frames sometimes) !!
iMac Intel "White" Core2Duo, 2GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.5.6. Movies read from external FW400 disk.