Re: WMP 9 on OS X 10.2.8 -- very slow jerky playback of some .wmv

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: Delysid (Delysid_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 02/11/05 

Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 04:37:06 -0800

"Corentin Cras-Méneur" wrote:
 
> > What about 3rd-party developers, i.e. neither Apple nor Microsoft? Do any
> > of them offfer a video player that supports Windows Media, and is faster than
> > MS's own WMP?
>
> I'm not sure the sources are freely available...
> The codecs that are "open" are already supported byt third party apps
> like VLC (MacOS X only). If the sources of the other ones were also
> available, I don;t doubt that they would have integrated them..,

Hey, thanks for the tip on VLC. I hadn't heard of it before, so I looked it
up in versiontracker.com and downloaded the latest version for OS X, 0.8.1.

It doesn't seem to support the WMP 9 video codec identified in the VLC
properties window as WMV 3 for the file I described above. As for WMV 2, it
supports it in some files and not others -- must be different subversions of
WMV 2.

But for the WMP video codecs it does support, it plays them beautifully.
I've got some .wmv files from a particular website that all play with a low
frame rate in WMP 9, with long gaps when a scene cuts to another, with many
lost frames. In VLC, however, these same files play perfectly smoothly. So
I hope they'll be able to add support for the latest Windows Media video
codecs soon!

Apart from codec support, VLC also has an excellent full-featured playlist,
something lacking in both QT Player and Windows Media Player. VLC also has
scads of other goodies not found in the competition -- I may start using it
as my main video file player.

Thanks!

P.S. For anyone else reading this who wants to check out VLC, here's the
website:

http://www.videolan.org/

It's an open source multi-platform project that originated in France.
Highly recommended!

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