

VLC desperately needs a Mac OS developer to help out - anigbrowl
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=59905#p228791

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hieronymusN
This is really tragic. I rely on VLC for all my video viewing needs. It loads
video much faster than QuickTime w/ Perian and is much more responsive, not to
mention the vast array of file formats it supports. I also like being able to
tweak the buffer sizes to optimize playback from my NAS. I'm a little shocked
there aren't any Cocoa devs wanting to work on this. Do I need to try and
learn Objective-C now? I fear I would only damage the code base.

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e40
MPlayer. I had some videos that wouldn't play with VLC that would play with
MPlayer. (They were encoded with Nero Recode.)

<http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html>

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cookiecaper
mplayer is great and I use it as my primary video player, but I can understand
why one would prefer VLC -- it's much more friendly, even if you use the GUI
for both.

Also, mplayer and VLC are helpmeets in my system; sometimes VLC can play
something that mplayer will choke on, and vice versa. VLC is a valuable
resource indeed.

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travisjeffery
Perian and QT have definitely not replaced VLC at all. I'll give you one
example: VLC's filters kicks the functionality that QT can give square in the
nuts. I often apply VLC's Audio tempo scalar synched with rate filter for
listening to sped up lectures. That feature alone makes VLC necessary for me,
not to mention all the other stuff it does.

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justinl
VLC is also used by other programs (such as Handbrake) to perform decryption
of protected DVDs.

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ajg1977
Technically it's not. Programs use the libdvdcss functionality built into VLC,
but there are other alternatives (such as Fairmount) that also use libdvdcss.
VLC is just more likely to be installed. Indeed, if you're running 64-bit
Handbrake then the lack of a (stable) 64-bit version of VLC makes Fairmount a
better option.

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st3fan
"""Finally, we have a few issues, since Apple doesn't want us on the Mac
platform and is blocking us a lot, and refuses to explain why."""

I don't understand this. The Mac is pretty much an open platform. Putting
video on the screen is not something Apple can block.

Does anyone know what they are specifically talking about?

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ivoire
This sentence means that _some people_ in the Apple compagnie doesn't really
like VLC. So they remove VLC from the offcial Apple download page without any
explanation. We don't understand why as some other people in Apple do really
like VLC...

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mustpax
The answer is simple really. They want to:

A) push their now-free QuickTime X player, along with the H.264 codec.

B) push consumers towards consuming more video through iTunes instead of
other, um, ad-hoc channels.

I love VLC, but I can see how Apple has a competitive interest in not actively
promoting VLC.

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jey
Do enough people care to fund it? I personally do use VLC, but if it became
unmaintained I'd just switch to another player.

I'm (theoretically) willing to maintain it if I can make enough in donations
to pay the bills. (Contracting fills that role right now.)

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CrLf
That's probably the spirit that got VLC where it is now. Not having the time
or the skill to contribute is one thing, being willing to contribute but only
if there's money involved is another.

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randallsquared
If people would prefer to use something else than pay for VLC, then VLC is
literally not worth it.

It's quite possible that's the case; I think most people on Mac would rather
use Quicktime (w/ Flip4Mac [ _1_ ], which is Microsoft-supported) for free
than pay for VLC. But if there were a trivially easy way to pay a dollar, I
think a lot of folks would. Ultimately, open source projects that aren't fun
to work on will live or die by the micropayments problem.

 _1_ or whatever; I'd never heard of Perian before this thread, and I just
switched back to Linux from OS X.

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jamesbritt
"It's quite possible that's the case; I think most people on Mac would rather
use Quicktime (w/ Flip4Mac [1], which is Microsoft-supported) for free than
pay for VLC."

I'm probably an atypical Mac user. I sometimes use my Mac to watch movies, but
generally don't care for the OSX UI and don't care if something doesn't have a
true OSX feel (n fact, non-OSX may suit me better). (I have a Mini for
development purposes but do most things on Kubuntu.)

I like using VLC because, aside from its feature set, I use it on Vista and
Kubuntu as well and know what it can do and how to do it. (Usually; for
whatever reason, the default keyboard shorts are oddly different on different
platforms. I don't _think_ it's because of collisions with preexisting
shortcuts, and I usually just reassign them to suit myself.)

This thread has informed me about some other OSX options I'll try out, but so
far VLC is about the most full-featured player I've seen. Couldn't live
without the equalizer, gamma/brightness control, audio sync adjustment, and
such.

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randallsquared
There are other differences, too. The playlist showed up by default on the OS
X version of VLC, and I haven't found a way to make that happen on the Ubuntu
version. Also, the OS X version has a very nice "jump 10 seconds" feature
which the Ubuntu version seems to lack entirely (or I couldn't find it). It's
weird that the OS X version of VLC actually seemed to have more features and a
markedly better interace than the linux version, to the point that although I
used VLC almost exclusively on OS X, now that I use linux I usually use Totem.

~~~
jamesbritt
Not sure about the playlist thing, but on linux there are keyboard shortcuts
for jumps of varying lengths (some combo of left or right arrow and
ctrl|alt|shift variations).

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ivenkys
It would be really sad if VLC on Os X goes , that's one of the main apps i
use.

QT + Perian and MPlayer are nowhere near to VLC in terms of functionality. I
can get any ol format and get VLC to play it , as an example .iso files.

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Zev
Interesting that it took 10 days for this news to get out. Kind of makes me
feel like Mac OS X isn't exactly a high priority for the people behind VLC?

I do hope that they find a dev though.

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wmf
The people behind VLC are whoever shows up, so I'd say VLC isn't a high
priority for OS X open source volunteers.

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m0th87
That's a shame because VLC is by far the best media tool I've ever used on OS
X in terms of playback compatibility.

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afshin
I think that largely used to be true ... but nowadays with tools like Perian
and Mplayer OSX Extended it's definitely no longer the case. With Snow
Leopard, VLC is actually the weakest of the media players in terms of
stability and performance, in my opinion.

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vimalg2
Comment grandparent explains why.

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riobard
Not the original commenter, but here is my take on it on Snow Leopard: I use
QuickTime X a lot for its h.264 hardware acceleration. As of now, that's the
only option you have if you want to play 1080p on Mac. Coupled with Perian, I
think it solves the majority of playback issues with a rather simple user
interface. Then I use MPlayer OS X Extended for its better support for MKV,
subs, DTS, AC3, etc. And it has a very simple interface like the original
QuickTime player (< X). So really, there's much less need for VLC on that
platform...

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dylanz
"Taking into account the learning curve to VLC development, I think it is fair
to say that the situation is now critical."... Yikes.

I'm a big fan of VLC, and hope to see someone jump on board with them. VLC has
an amazing suite of tools under its hood, although most casual users simple
reference them it as a Media "Player". If I knew a hint of Mac OS development,
I'd be jumping on board.

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alanthonyc
The OP:

VLC is looking for MacOS X developers Postby ajmas on _Fri May 29, 2009_ 5:55
am

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byrneseyeview
by Rémi Denis-Courmont on _Sun Dec 06, 2009 11:00 pm_

There are now effectively zero active developers for MacOS.

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ivoire
This is absolutely false. The only thing true is the fact that there isn't so
many mac developers for VLC. They need helps because they want to bring a
really nice player.

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cl3m
They should start a kickstarter project to pay someone to work on it..

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kw_
I wonder if this is because Perian has eliminated much of the need for VLC.

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scotth
Quicktime can't crank the volume up like VLC does. It sounds like a small
thing, but when you're on a laptop with little speakers it makes a big
difference.

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tumult
Yeah it can. There are two ways, in the sound section of the video properties
("boost") or by holding shift and pressing the up-arrow key. Normally the
QuickTime volume control widget stops you at 0db (any more than that and you
would be clipping the signal) but if you hold shift and keep pressing up (up
and down control the volume widget) it will go beyond 0db, even though it
doesn't visually indicate it.

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GeneralMaximus
Sadly, they disabled this in QuickTime X. Some of my friends use older
versions of QuickTime to get around this problem.

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lsd5you
Geez, os x is completely riddled with tricks you 'have to know', usually
achieved by some obscure key combination. Which UI book did they get this out
of ? ...

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GeneralMaximus
The don't-clutter-my-screen-with-nine-hundred-thousand-buttons-and-menus book?

Joking aside, most OS X keyboard shortcuts actually follow a very rational
scheme (which is mentioned in the Apple HIG, IIRC). If Cmd+X performs an
action X, both Cmd+Shift+X and Cmd+Opt+X will perform similar versions of X,
so you don't have trouble remembering "special" shortcuts.

Example: Cmd+Q quits an application, Cmd+Shift+Q logs you out and
Cmd+Opt+Shift+Q logs you out without confirmation.

Another example: Cmd+Opt+Esc brings up the Force Quit dialog.
Cmd+Shift+Opt+Esc force quits the current application without confirmation.

I don't think this is an OS X specific thing. I suspect Windows, KDE and GNOME
all follow a similar HIG.

(No, none of those shortcuts are good for your RSI.)

