Seeking in mkv isn't slow in Perian (and you can even seek into the middle of a subtitle, unlike other players), it's just the initial load that's slow. Unfortunately MKV only really allows one or the other.

I tried using Perian but I hate how it has to load .mkv files first, especially when rewatching episodes of anime just for a certain part that is usually in the middle/end. I'm really loving mplayer, one of the best mac alternatives I have tried so far. All thanks for the people who compile their own mplayers and release it to the internet for users such as myself.


edit: I noticed when watching claymore episodes during playback the video would more often than not pause/stutter for a second and then the video speeds up for a second to catch up. Anyone else have similar issues?

Yes. I will hazard a guess that the video may not stutter in the same place if watched again, and that the file is most likely an HD version. If so, these files tend to be fairly resource-intensive, so if your Mac is doing other things in the background, or is a little low on memory you may see occasional blips like that. Very little you can do beyond ensuring that you don't run much on your machine at the same time!

Hello all!

I'm thinking about upgrading my 7300 in my MacPro to a ATI HD3870. Will I see a noticeable improvement in playback performance? Its sometimes a little jumpy when Fullscreen on my 30" ACD and while I have my 20" inch on and I have some stuff going on in the background.

I am pretty sure you're not going to get any hardware decoding through that HD3870 so there shouldn't be major performance gains.

I don't think there is going to be much change until Snow Leopard is released. Core AVC for OS X doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Quicktime X is supposed to have better decoding than the current one so hopefully that will help.

Do you have the lavdopts option in mplayer set to fast decoding? It should make a noticeable difference on your multi-core machine. But I wouldn't count on a video card upgrade helping in that area until Snow Leopard hits, assuming the mplayer trunk adopts use of OpenCL in the Mac binaries.

I upgraded from the 7300 to the 8800 and only noticed a difference in playing back 1080p videos in quicktime and then only when scaling the videos down so they'd fit on the screen. With the 7300 I'd be dropping frames like crazy. With the 8800 it no longer does that. I noticed absolutely no difference with vlc or mplayer.

Does anyone else get stuttering when playing videos on their mplayer? It can be a regular SD file or a HD file it'll all stutter the same on my mplayer osx. I've tried a few different versions. I can play the same files on QT without stutter so just wondering is there a way to fix this?
edit: the stuttering problem I experience is the video frame will freeze for 1-5 seconds and then speed up/skip to where the audio is. The audio never stutters, only the video frame. Also this doesn't happen often when first opening a video file but gets progressively worse as the video continues.

First, thanks for your help!

Where do I set the Lavdopts option in MPlayer? In the Preferences? Under Post processing?

-lavdopts fast won't improve multithreading of x264. Using -framedrop (or not using -framedrop if you are using it) might do something.

In the "Miscellaneous" tab, in the field where you can enter additional parameters yourself, type

I don't even think fast does anything for H.264...

skiploopfilter=nonref will though, as will skiploopfilter=all.

Yes, it does. But not for x264-encoded H.264, as you already know better than most. Thus, since the majority of H.264 releases made by fansubbers are encoded using x264, you're mostly right.

Verist, even so, I'd recommend using Adrian's MPlayer OSX Extended, since it has an extremely friendly GUI. Though I believe you might want to try closing some of the other processes running on your computer as a first step. That's probably the largest culprit here.

Hi all,

I've decided here, after nearly two years, to take the custom build of MPlayer built by Nonezumi and I offline - the build linked in the first page of this thread. The reason? We haven't maintained it for a while now for various reasons, and also (and primarily!) that the newer MPlayer Extended by anime_layer has really filled the gap that we were trying to bridge - that of giving people a nice, comfortable and usable MacOSX native video player, with styled subtitles and fast decoding. Kudos to him, indeed - the old build location now redirects to Extended. :)

It's been a fun ride, but it's time to close... I say that even now, looking at my transfer stats, which show me that there are still people downloading our build even now - indeed, looking over time, cumulatively our build has been downloaded some twelve thousand times, with nearly fifty gigs of traffic over the almost two years of availability. Not too shabby for something distributed by a fan forum, that only jumped to Intel after a year of life, and has been languishing, stable, but not updated, for quite some time - the file is still getting around ten downloads a day. :S

Thanks everyone, for the fun, even with some of the exasperating questions ;). Glad it proved useful. ^^


-Andiyar

Hmm...the mplayer extended doesn't work on leopard for me. It just...refuses to load the file and I have to forcequit it ><

It did that for me the first time but when opening it a second time, it seems to work again.

The first time Mplayer extended is opened it needs to cache all the fonts on the system. That's why it takes a long time on the first time. The next time it opens everything is already cached and ready to go :)

Thank you for clarifying! :p

I'm sorry if this sounds like a total noob question...

So, I can play .mkv files just fine in QuickTime with Perian... but I can't figure out how to turn off the subtitles! There should be a way since they are soft subs, but I'm not finding any options under View menu either.

I'm on Mac OS 10.5 if that helps. I've been using gg's mkv subs. I know there are other players to watch them with, but I'm trying to stick with QuickTime so that I can export the .mkv files without the subtitles into QuickTime format to make AMVs, and I really don't want to have to go downloading raws.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

You should be able to disable subtitles by pressing v on your keyboard.