MKV and finder issues with VLC 0.8.6c

[Mr. Snrub]

Whenever i play ANY MKV file, it becomes choppy and drops frames and will eventually crash.
I've seen this problem a lot of the forum, but it seems as if all the computers are older (g4 and g3s)
Also, as soon as i open the MKV file, the kernel_task process suddenly eats up resources and ends up slowing me down to a crawl, until i force quit the finder, and the problem is fixed.
Anyone know why either of these problems are happening?

I have a Powermac G5 Dual 2.0 processor with 2 gigs of ram and a 256 meg Geforce vid card.


thanks to anyone who can help

[llflip]

it's simple FFmpeg the codec source is a big crap. And it's unable to play mkv with x264.
Don't buy a mac to play media.
I got a G5 quad 4Go quadro Fx4500 and VLC "display computer too slow".

Buy a PC if you want play well media like mkv.

[hardluck]

it's simple FFmpeg the codec source is a big crap. And it's unable to play mkv with x264.
Don't buy a mac to play media.
I got a G5 quad 4Go quadro Fx4500 and VLC "display computer too slow".

Buy a PC if you want play well media like mkv.

I don't know what you are talking about because my 2 GHz G5 iMac plays MKV 720x480 in VLC just fine. Even 1280x720 DivX/Xvid up to 9Mbps playback smoothly in VLC on my Mac…and that's with just an ATI Radeon 9600! Don't buy a Mac to play media indeed

Mr snrub don't listen to liflip who either needs technical support or is a jealous pc user. All things being the same VLC should play MKV files on your Mac like it does on mine -- sorry I can't be anymore help.

[plasmacutter]

I had this happen once on my g5, not the slowing down to a crash part though.

when the player crashed on me (grabbed the latest stable one today) it took the finder with it.

it was not a reproducable error though, after that it played quite well.

for reference on video processing capacity, the file in question was 720p h.264 with 5.1 dts, and most normal ntsc sized matroska will only utilize around 20% cpu. you should get smooth playback on your machine assuming you have more than 256 megs of ram : ).

I'd suggest in order:
-resetting prefs to default
-checking other matroska files with similar codecs to make sure youre not dealing with a corrupted file (if theyre all from the same source find a completely separate source)
-finally try upping the cache to 700 ms (input->access modules->file->cache value *advanced checked)

*if it turns out the video files (assuming the same source) were corrupted or simply nonstandard, i do believe vlc has a place to upload samples, so post back here and ask if that turns out to be the case.

(on a semi-related note on the new build i grabbed... KUDOS to the vlc team, vlc once again trumps mplayer all around in playback quality. dunno what you guys do but keep doing it!)

[Mr. Snrub]

I had this happen once on my g5, not the slowing down to a crash part though.
I'd suggest in order:
-resetting prefs to default
-checking other matroska files with similar codecs to make sure youre not dealing with a corrupted file (if theyre all from the same source find a completely separate source)
-finally try upping the cache to 700 ms (input->access modules->file->cache value *advanced checked)

hey thanks a lot, the upping of the cache worked perfectly

i just checked out a bunch of movies i had on here and all played well, both on my 20" and 32" HDTV

That damn MKV issue has been bugging me for months, i even bought a new video card, thinking my old Geforce 5200 was the problem, it fixed SOME issues, but not all of them (it ony had 64 megs of vram)

thanks a lot again, i appreciate it.

[snooze]

Hello!

I have a similar problem with mkv files, vlc work fine with other files (mainly avi)
at first, I can only play the audio without the picture, then I thought it is because an old version of VLC so I downloaded the newest version for mac, but then not only it did not play the video, it immediately crashes everytime i attempted to play any mkv file.
I tried the ffmg codec and hurry up, it didn't work, then I tried set everything to default and upping the cache to 900, it plays for several seconds now before it crashed again. I have four mkv files and they all the same problem.
arrghhh, this is soo frustrating, what to do??

[quintopia]

I, too, was having this problem, except on a Windows PC, and I found a solution, if an imperfect one.

Of course, the creators of this forum aren't going to like the solution.

The solution is to install SMPlayer, set the process priority to realtime, the deinterlace to yadif (double framerate) and turn on loop skipping for HD.

It still lags on occasion, but only for short periods. It doesn't crash.

Let me know if this works for Mac. (I know there is a stable Mac version of SMPlayer.)

[Schweiz]

I didn't notice stuttering issues on the mac, but these videos sure don't look as good on a mac as the buttery smoothness of a pc.

[naisanza]

Windows Media Player Classic plays exceptionally well without having to change any settings.