Current status of VLC 1.1.x on Mac PPC?

[rascalb]

Hi,

First of all, I want to thank all the developers for all their time in making a great player that I have been using for years.

I am using a PPC Mac running OS 10.5.8. I keep checking the VLC site for news that the 1.1.x path is now ready for us PPC users. However, it has been a little over two months since that branch was opened and there is as yet no version newer than 1.0.5 for me to download. And with the note about the 1.0.x branch containing a number of security issues, in addition to the performance gains in 1.1.x, I would like to upgrade as soon as possible.

I have seen the documentation for the major bug preventing the release of the PPC version. I was just curious as to the status of fixing it. The last comment in the forums that I found was from the end of July. As of now, is it more of a case of trying to locate the bug, or is it more finding people to put the hours in to fix a bug in what I imagine is a not very widely used platform?

Thank you for any information you can give. I know that these things take time, but I'd love to be able to keep up hope that a new version is coming sooner rather than later.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Nobody looks at it so nobody knows the status. Or you could maybe say the status is undefined.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Nobody looks at it so nobody knows the status. Or you could maybe say the status is undefined.

This is wrong, I know the status.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Hi,

First of all, I want to thank all the developers for all their time in making a great player that I have been using for years.

I am using a PPC Mac running OS 10.5.8. I keep checking the VLC site for news that the 1.1.x path is now ready for us PPC users. However, it has been a little over two months since that branch was opened and there is as yet no version newer than 1.0.5 for me to download. And with the note about the 1.0.x branch containing a number of security issues, in addition to the performance gains in 1.1.x, I would like to upgrade as soon as possible.

I have seen the documentation for the major bug preventing the release of the PPC version. I was just curious as to the status of fixing it. The last comment in the forums that I found was from the end of July. As of now, is it more of a case of trying to locate the bug, or is it more finding people to put the hours in to fix a bug in what I imagine is a not very widely used platform?

Thank you for any information you can give. I know that these things take time, but I'd love to be able to keep up hope that a new version is coming sooner rather than later.

The current state is simple, the code mostly works, but there is a clear display issue as you can see here:


You can test a debug build here too:
http://jones.videolan.org/~videolan/fpk/ppc-debug/

[Mike Richardson]

Solution Found

I just tried the debug build on my G5. I noticed two videos also in the directory, cea.mov and downloadfirstlook.m4v.

downloadfirstlook.m4v works fine for me, I don't know if that is supposed to be a bad one or not. cea.mov looks just like the picture above.

The solution that works for me, is to go into Preferences, choose "All" radio button, then go to "Input / Codecs", "Video Codecs", "x264". Find the check box for "Skip loop filter" and check it. Then press Save.

Now cea.mov will work just fine! Disabling the loop filter also speeds up playing of H.264 videos on older computers. I would often use it in older versions to play 1080p on my G5 without any stuttering. You could probably get 720p on a dual G4. In any case it's much lower CPU usage than QuickTime for the same file, and barely any quality difference.

Anyway - at least you guys know where the problem is, you can narrow it down and maybe get PowerPC fully supported again. VLC is a great program to breathe some life into older Macs, I would hate to see support go away.

[fkuehne]

I've spend some time with the PowerPC-port yesterday and tracked down the issue to a faulty altivec-enabled chroma converter. Due to this, videos with a width being a multiple of 16 but not a multiple of 32 were displayed the way shown above.

I worked around this by disabling the altivec optimization for this specific part and now it appears to work. Could you guys please get the following build and provide feedback?

VLC 1.1.5 pre-release.


@ Mike: interesting solution, but I'm glad to have found the issue in VLC itself.

[ragingtoad]

Brilliant! VLC is working perfectly again on G4

[Giovas123]

Thanks, everything's fine on my Powerbook G4 too.

[fkuehne]

Great, thanks!

[Mike Richardson]

Good to hear it's been figured out. Hopefully the next main release can be for both PPC and Intel.

[fkuehne]

We are planning to release an updated version for Mac OS X by the end of the week including the fixed PowerPC port.

[Mike Richardson]

Trying to check "Skip Loop Filter" now crashes on my computer (Dual G5, 10.5.. It did work in 1.1.2. It does not work in 1.1.4.1 or 1.1.5 (nightly).

1.2.0 (nightly) does not launch at all.

I deleted all prefs and caches and it makes no difference.

[Mike Richardson]

Followup (because I can't edit post because it wasn't approved. I'm not a spammer)

You can disable the loop filter another way in the "Input and Codecs" tab, this seems to work. Now I can play 1080p on a Dual G5.

[laptopleon]

Hi, I finally found a thread about this

I found out I can't run bluray quality movies on VLS on my G5, they get all messy and stuttering.

1) I have a dual G5 as well, but I can't run a version newer than VLC 0.9.10 on OS X 10.4.11. I assume I need to upgrade to 10.5 before I can run VLC 1.1.2 PPC?? But how do I do that, the G5 won't install Leopard, right?

2) It's a 8,5 GB / two hour movie in 1080p, is it realistic to think it will run nicely on a G5 dual processor, if I can somehow get 10.5 / 1.1.2 on it?

Thanks

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

2. NO the G5 is too slow.

[kdean]

But how do I do that, the G5 won't install Leopard, right?

G5 will install Leopard (10.5) fine. It's Snow Leopard (10.6) that you can't install.