MPlayer OS X 2 ruuuulz

ellen's boy toyellen's boy toy
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
I'm sorry, but QT has dropped the ball as a video player.

Apple had nothing to lose with QT's miniscule market share vs. RealPlayer and WMP, so why didn't they just go for it and let QT become a babble fish of media playback?



MPlayer OS X 2 has shown it can be done, and FOR FREE no less.



I can't thank these guys enough for porting this amazing Linux app over to OS X. BTW, vlc is almost as good.



So, I enourage all of you to try this app out. It's a simple install now on a .dmg. Just drag it to your Apps folder, and then drag any media you want onto it. (Thanks to Jan Devera!) It plays mpgs, and every form of DiVX encoding I've thrown at it, and this is on an ibook 600mhz G3.



http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/



PS: I'm still trying to figure out how to play a movie that has a separate .sub file with the subtitles in it! I know the command line version can do this. Anyone know how using the GUI?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    rhoqrhoq Posts: 190member
    Haven't tried it yet, but MPlayer OS-X 3 is now available!
  • Reply 2 of 11
    o and ao and a Posts: 579member
    What ball has quicktime dropped? The ball for playing stolen movies recorded in a non standardized format that is ever changing every day and has so many variations its difficult to even coun them?



    Sorry but quicktime works. It works well and improvements will come. Quicktime is still the best way to deliver your video content online and have it work perfectly on all platforms.
  • Reply 3 of 11
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    DivX isn't just for stolen movies. Quicktime really only plays MOVs and MPG/MPEGs well. What about those AVI files that PC users always send? What about strange format files that don't want to play in anything else? What if you want fullscreen without having to pay $30 for QT Pro?



    Quicktime works, yes, and the Mac version works well (can't say the same for the PC version ) but what's wrong with MPlayer? It's a great app, at least for compatability. Although the usability leaves a lot to be desired.
  • Reply 4 of 11
    ellen's boy toyellen's boy toy Posts: 21member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by O and A

    What ball has quicktime dropped? The ball for playing stolen movies recorded in a non standardized format that is ever changing every day and has so many variations its difficult to even coun them?





    DiVX != stolen, just like mp3 != stolen.

    There are many, many encoding formats out there. It's a jungle. And QT player had a chance to neutrally decode as many as possible. That is the ball they dropped. I mean, there is a 3ivX decoder for QT player now. It's been out for a while. Why do I need to go DL it and add it still?? Why doesn't apple include it with QT? This is just one example.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by O and A

    Sorry but quicktime works. It works well and improvements will come. Quicktime is still the best way to deliver your video content online and have it work perfectly on all platforms. [/B]



    QT is a great system for delivering your content, I agree. But the QT player is not a realistic choice at all for anyone wanting to play a media file from the web. It fails for me in some way (no sound, sound not-in-sync, white screen, garbled pixels, only "sees" half of the mpg really there, etc) almost 90% of the time.
  • Reply 5 of 11
    ellen's boy toyellen's boy toy Posts: 21member
    Luca, have you tried the latest version?

    It's quite usable. installation is just drag and drop into Applications folder, and playing movies is just drag movie to icon.



    I can't agree that QT even plays mpegs well. I had an mpeg file that I thought was only 2/3 complete. Since when I played it with QT, the timeline seemed to go all the way to the end and the movie wasn't finished. Imagine my surprise when MPlayer played the whole movie for me!

    Turns out QT doesn't like the way some mpg editors do digital merging or whatever.

    Give me a break Apple. You know, there's a LOT of web pages out there that don't follow the XHTML rules. So does that mean Safari can't show them to us?? I don't think people would be too happy if Safari could only render 1/3 of the websites out there because all the other ones didn't follow the rules of XHTML Strict format! Now imagine they paid $30 for a browser like that.



    It's the same with media players.
  • Reply 6 of 11
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Quicktime iports and exports tons of different movie and image formats. I don't know exactly why all those damn avi files made by any one of umpteen billion codecs can't be made to play in QT, though I thought that Intel controls the most prevalent Indeo codecs and they have no interest in developing Indeo plug-ins for QT again (they did it years ago but they're for Classic obviously and hopelessly out of date).



    The whole video scene with avis is a train wreck anyway. But that's I guess what people want: clueless engineers, companies, pirates who know only how to complicate things and confuse users. But that's another story, and one that will probably never go away.



    [added]link to compatible filetypes
  • Reply 7 of 11
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    That's why there codecs. 3ivx for example. I guess 3ivx just needs to work harder to get the compatibility of MPlayer.
  • Reply 8 of 11
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    However a Playlist feature in QuickTime would be sweeet. That Favorites drawer or whatever happened to it isn't the same.
  • Reply 9 of 11
    o and ao and a Posts: 579member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ellen's boy toy

    DiVX != stolen, just like mp3 != stolen.

    There are many, many encoding formats out there. It's a jungle. And QT player had a chance to neutrally decode as many as possible. That is the ball they dropped. I mean, there is a 3ivX decoder for QT player now. It's been out for a while. Why do I need to go DL it and add it still?? Why doesn't apple include it with QT? This is just one example.







    QT is a great system for delivering your content, I agree. But the QT player is not a realistic choice at all for anyone wanting to play a media file from the web. It fails for me in some way (no sound, sound not-in-sync, white screen, garbled pixels, only "sees" half of the mpg really there, etc) almost 90% of the time.



    What are u using it on an mac LC or soemthing?



    Mp3 doesn't equal stolen
  • Reply 10 of 11
    jlljll Posts: 2,713member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ellen's boy toy

    I mean, there is a 3ivX decoder for QT player now. It's been out for a while. Why do I need to go DL it and add it still?? Why doesn't apple include it with QT? This is just one example.



    In case you haven't noticed, it's not finished yet, and 3ivX plans to make it available through QuickTime auto download feature which means that the codec will download when you encounter 3ivX content.
  • Reply 11 of 11
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by O and A

    Mp3 doesn't equal stolen



    That's what the person meant. the "!=" is what comes out when you type option-equal sign, which would normally be the "does not equal" symbol on a Mac. But when it gets posted to the web, it turns into those characters.



    QT only handles "well-made" mpegs and a few types of avis. I only have problems with mpegs that Joe Schmoe makes, the ones from more (for lack of a better term) professional content creators give me no problems.
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