Stuttering playback on the Mac? Try this!

[fkuehne]

You might have noticed a performance decrease within the last few releases or finally when updating to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

If you did, try this:

* Go to VLC's preferences
* Click on "All" at the bottom of the window
* Navigate to "Input/Codecs" -> "Access modules" -> "MMap"
* Activate "Use file memory mapping"
* Save the settings and restart VLC.

Afterwards, VLC should perform as expected. We will enable this setting by default in future releases of VLC for Mac OS X.

[Adidas1]

I'm sorry but this doesn't fix the issues with Snow Leopard. It slightly improves performance, but HD 720p MKV still stutter, freeze, and generally artifact like crazy. I'm back on 10.5 and the same files run just fine.

[fkuehne]

Does this MKV contain subtitles? If yes, we know what the cause of the issue is. I hope to have this fixed soon.

[brechtsky3]

Thanks so much, this REALLY helped !

@ Adidas1-- I have snow leopard, and tested with a 1080p ts file, worked beautifully

This version so far (and this is very premature as Ive tried like three or four files) is the best and smoothest since v .86!

[iamse7en]

We will enable this setting by default in future releases of VLC for Mac OS X.

Why wasn't this setting enabled by default in the most recently released 1.02? I was having annoying stuttering issues in the past, but we'll see if I'm having them with v1.02 (and I guess I won't know the difference in having this option enabled, b/c I'm going to enable it anyways right now).


EDIT: nevermind, I thought v1.02 came out tonight.

[ycjhi]

I'm experiencing the stuttering problem with VLC 1.0.2 (Intel 64-bit) and Snow Leopard whenever I play any 720p video in the fullscreen mode. Actually, this tip improved playback speed a little bit. But, the fullscreen playback is still not as smooth as it was with Leopard (10.5). Interestingly, while the video is stuttering, VLC consumes only about 50% of the CPU time. I've also tested some other players (Movist, MPlayer, MPlayer OSX Extended), and observed the same phenomenon in all the cases. To me, it seems this stuttering issue is not a VLC's problem, but a process scheduling issue with Snow Leopard.

[Adidas1]

I'm using plex on 10.5 at the moment to avoid any further stuttering but I'd love to go back to VLC. The poster above me is right - something's not right with snow leopard. Miro, Perian with qt7 and 10, movist... they all stuttered. VLC with the tweaks mentioned in various threads actually came out on top in terms of quality but still dropping frames every couple seconds. Apple let us down on this one methinks.

[djrazor]

the problem still persists, however when I change the screen resolution on my projector from 1600x1200 to 1280x1024 it greatly improves. i'm running a Macbook 2Ghz, 2GB Ram and the Intel GMA 950

[gcubed]

I'm experiencing the stuttering problem with VLC 1.0.2 (Intel 64-bit) and Snow Leopard whenever I play any 720p video in the fullscreen mode. Actually, this tip improved playback speed a little bit. But, the fullscreen playback is still not as smooth as it was with Leopard (10.5). Interestingly, while the video is stuttering, VLC consumes only about 50% of the CPU time. I've also tested some other players (Movist, MPlayer, MPlayer OSX Extended), and observed the same phenomenon in all the cases. To me, it seems this stuttering issue is not a VLC's problem, but a process scheduling issue with Snow Leopard.

Completely agree. I have MBP 13in mid 2009 (2.53Ghz, 9400m, 4gig) and with snow leopard I immediately get stuttering in video only when starting the movie on the 1080p TV but don't experience the same problem when playing it on laptop LCD. The same happens with PLEX and Quicktime. I have a feeling this is a Snlow Leopard issue. Any solutions out there?

P.S. Outputing SPDIF and HDMI signal to my TV in win 7 is absolutely impossible so I'm really hoping this issue of stutter is resolved soon.

[thebulgarian]

yes, i also have issue with MKV files and Subtitles being basically unwatchable in 10.6.1... i hope the fix is soon!

added to that i get an error message which tells me : "audio card not configured, got to: audio midi setup etc... using stereo mode now"
the sound is off for about a second, then the message pops up and hte sound starts to play. i use and m-audio firewire 410, snow leopard and its properly configured.
don't know if this is linked to the above problem or not...

[ATKeys]

I loaded Snow Leopard. Sound skips started. Tested YouTube's video of Kseniya Simonova, the sand artist, fine with Leopard, now with skips; same with a passage from a Shoshtakovich string quartet. Apple's instructional videos had too many skips to be intelligible. I've tried "On en parle" from Switzerland and that, which uses RealPlayer, also has audio skips. I discovered I had VLC's version 0.9.5 before the current download. That got sent to the Trash. Followed Mr. Kühne's recommendation & made the changes he recommended. And I've restarted the Intel iMac.

Nothing's changed. I've done more technically than I have in nine years. I've done a Disk Permissions Repair & upgraded to the BETA version of WMV Flip4Mac for Snow Leopard. Problems occur and problems get fixed. I'll look for version 1.0.3. Will Apple do anything? Apple had to have supplied v. 0.9.5; I didn't download it. Viele danke, and I hope for the best. Whenever. However. I don't want to give up and attempt an uninstall.

[ajmas]

With Snow Leopard Apple made many system architecture changes and tweaks, and in fact the whole point of 10.6 was behind the scenes improvements. It is possible that there are still further tweaks to be made, yet at the same time it would be interesting to see if taking advantage of things such as Grand Central Dispatch would yield any improvements for VLC.

BTW If you are interested in a technical explanation of the changes in Snow Leopard: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/20 ... x-10-6.ars

[theplague]

I don't even have Snow Leopard ("only" Leopard 10.5. the player stutters every now and then.
Really annoying.
A few version back(about before VLC left being beta) there where no problems with this.
Why now?

[addp009]

I used this option, and it definitely improves on the stuttering playback issue I'm having with .dvr-ms files.
However, it looks like my active memory heap grows uncontrollably large. After an hour of video playback, my active heap size grows to 2GB and the system paging a lot.

[t807]

I have a brand new unibody Macbook Pro 2.83ghz with 4gb ram and a 9600GT 512mb video card. I'm still getting the stuttering (although no where close to as bad after trying this fix) and it's extremely annoying. I am however running Snow Leopard right now and don't plan on rolling back. Any idea when a new version of VLC is coming out that will fix this? Or, any idea on when Apple will address this issue? Temporary fix? Let me know...

[robotic]

I'm experiencing the same issues, juddering, freezing, etc during playback.

Followed the advice below and it made a small imporvement but I'm still getting the glitches?

You might have noticed a performance decrease within the last few releases or finally when updating to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

If you did, try this:

* Go to VLC's preferences
* Click on "All" at the bottom of the window
* Navigate to "Input/Codecs" -> "Access modules" -> "MMap"
* Activate "Use file memory mapping"
* Save the settings and restart VLC.

Afterwards, VLC should perform as expected. We will enable this setting by default in future releases of VLC for Mac OS X.

Any ideas if there's anything else I can do.

Running a late-08 unibody MB Pro 2.8 4gb RAM - the issue is present on both graphics cards.

robotic

[theplague]

Test this and come back with report please!: http://mattgadient.com/2009/08/29/vlc-m ... r-the-fix/

So far works for me.

[kdean]

Test this and come back with report please!: http://mattgadient.com/2009/08/29/vlc-m ... r-the-fix/

So far works for me.

I tried this a while back, but I came across one negative. It seems to hose up the ability to jump around the video with key commands properly. It would work the first few times and then video would stop appearing and it wouldn't come back. Setting the cache back resolved the issue.

The drawback to the memory map fix is that it takes up a huge amount of memory when playing large video files.

[panomir]

Hello, VLC 1.0.2 seems to have problems with memory management.
TV streams stop after few seconds… in HD or even standard quality.

I turned back to VLC 1.0.1 and all works perfectly
(on Snow Leopard)

[Guiph]

Hi,

Same problem here, VLC seems unable to play correctly MKV 720 p file in snow leopard that played fine in leopard.
None of the hint here helped me.
Problem happens on my Macbook core 2 duo 2Ghz - 2Go Ram.
Everything works fine fine on my iMac core Duo. Both on snow leopard.
Really expecting a solution. VLC is great soft, hope you'll find what's going wrong here.

[phanam]

Hi there!

Another possible solution:

The options mentioned above helped a little bit but were no true fix for me. But I stumbled incidentally upon a new possible source of the problem: the qtkitserver. I noticed that this process is running when mkvs are playing poorly thus I killed it with the Activity Monitor found in the Applications/Utilities folder. Surprise .. the mkvs played all smoothly! Well, until I changed the directory in Finder which restarts the QTKitServer process.
There are 2 different QTKitServer process running on my MBP: QTKitServer-Finder and QTKitServer-Quicklookhelper. The one behaving nasty seems to be the former one. I don't know exactly what it does but my guess is that it is responsible for generating the preview-thumbnail in Column-Mode.
To examine if this is the source for your problems too, I would suggest to try the following:
- Start the Activity Monitor (Apps/Utilities)
- Open the finder and move to the directory containing your mkv(s)
- Kill the QTKitServer process(es) with the Activity Monitor
- Double-Click the mkv to start VLC

This method solves for me the stuttering and prevents the VLC from "beachballing" on exit. Hope it helps you too ..

[SuiGeneris]

I've used VLC for years and years and always considered it the premier media player however since it left 0.9 I have constant break up and stuttering etc etc.

I assumed it was my iMac but its not and having followed the advice in the first post it makes NO difference and I'm running 10.5. Please find a fix I don't want to give up on VLC.

[acde1345]

My playback has been very clear and consistent when opening VLC, even when using increased playback speed to watch video.

However, after pausing and resuming video, massive skipping of audio and video ensues. I've tried the various technqiues listed previously on this thread, but to no avail. Perhaps this is a unique effect due to the playback speed. Any suggestions? (I have used the most recent windows VLC player without such issues.)

[Guiph]

Hello,

Latest VLC version helped a little, but video playback is still stuttering here.
OS X 10.6.2 din't helped.
I have white macbook 2 Hgz with Go memory
Video is GMA 950
Everything worked fine with leopard, problems started with snow leopard.

[SuiGeneris]

Hello,

Latest VLC version helped a little, but video playback is still stuttering here.
OS X 10.6.2 din't helped.
I have white macbook 2 Hgz with Go memory
Video is GMA 950
Everything worked fine with leopard, problems started with snow leopard.

Its not a Snow Leopard problem, I have it on Leopard.