[Mark Booth]

I use VLC's playlist feature to put together a group of video files (custom intros, movie trailers, cartoons, etc.) for pre-movie entertainment. VLC is almost perfect for this because it plays almost every video format known to man. Almost perfect because VLC has an annoying bug when using it's playlist feature.... As it switches from one video file to another, it will frequently show a brief "flash" of the desktop. Not the end of the world, but also not as "professional" as I'd like.


Now there's a new player that shows some promise. It's called yFlicks . yFlicks allows you to organize groups of videos in folders (somewhat similar to iTunes). You can then play the videos in a particular group in succession and in full screen mode. And it does it without any interrupting "flashes to the desktop" between videos. Just seemless playback.


Now the bad news.... yFlicks doesn't support VOB or transport stream (.ts) files. And, unfortunately, the custom CERT intro that I use on my Mac Mini HTPC, as well as the DD, DTS and THX trailers I have on hard drive, are transport stream files.


Now.... yFlicks (through the necessary codecs) can play back AC3 audio. But not if it's a VOB or .ts file. I investigated using MPEG Streamclip to convert the .ts files to QuickTime (which it will do), but MPEG Streamclip will only convert 2 audio channels at a time. I would have to convert four different audio channel files and then combine them with A.Pack (part of Apple's DVD Studio Pro package) which I don't have.


So, for now, I'm stuck with VLC. Hopefully, someday, the developers will fix the "flash to the desktop" playlist problem. They are aware of it and admit that it is a problem.


But, for those of you that simply want to string together a bunch of Apple's QuickTime movie trailers, and maybe a cartoon or other content that you have in man of the other formats, you might want to give yFlicks a look.


Mark

 

[Further]

There is another program that can do a little better and is free besides. It is called Nice Player. It can play most file types, including DVD, and can make playlists. However, it too has a problem: it can't do surround sound. The developers (two students) plan to add surround sound, but they are already five months late on the next version and that is one version away from surround sound.


I know about the VLC problem and strangely enough, I didn't have it until I switched to version 0.8.6. I plan to reinstall my system and hope that I can recreate the problem-free version of VLC.

 

[Mark Booth]

The "flashes the desktop" problem doesn't happen EVERY time with VLC. But the bug was there in 0.8.5 and continues to be there in 0.8.6. As I mentioned, the development guys are aware of it. It happens because VLC opens a new video output for each file in the playlist. They know how to fix it but lack the manpower to work on the fix. I think they will eventually get it fixed, but I have no idea when that will happen.


My thread regarding the subject can be found at the videolan forums here:

http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=21084


Mark

 

[Further]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Booth /forum/post/0


The "flashes the desktop" problem doesn't happen EVERY time with VLC. But the bug was there in 0.8.5 and continues to be there in 0.8.6. As I mentioned, the development guys are aware of it. It happens because VLC opens a new video output for each file in the playlist. They know how to fix it but lack the manpower to work on the fix. I think they will eventually get it fixed, but I have no idea when that will happen.

Yes, I've read that too. But, I've tried an experiment that was quite interesting: I put three .avi files in the playlist and had no problem at all playing them. Then I added a DVD and the problem happened. When I removed the DVD (ripped), the problem went away.