1080p MKV playback on Mac OS X (VLC)

Jun 03, 2008 | 21:34:13

By marcwan

If you’re like me, you used to think that your Intel Mac was a pretty powerful computer. With all of those super zippy cores and RAMs and caches and all that, everything does seem to go a lot faster on the newer machines. My JustLooking compiles went from nearly 4 minutes on my PowerBook G4 to about 35 seconds on my 2.33GHz laptop.

But then came all those 1080p MKV files, with their unbelievable (basically unwatchable) jerkiness, and you found yourself questioning the new religious order. Is the machine, perhaps, actually a piece of junk? Was it that hard disk upgrade you did? The new RAM you installed? Leopard? Some awful combination thereof?

The good news is that it’s actually a software issue. Even lower-end Intel Macs should have no problems playing back this kind of file, provided you have the right software. Out of the box, VLC – the most commonly seen player for this file type – seems to have a lot of troubles. Seeking results in a crash about 40% of the time.

While you’ve always got the choice of using another player, like CorePlayer or OSXBMC, you actually can make VLC work just fine with the file type:

Open up Preferences
Click the Advanced checkbox in the lower left corner
“Input / Codecs”, “Other codecs”, ‘FFmpeg’
Under “Skip the loop filter for H.264 decoding”, select “All”. By default “None” is selected. (Thanks to Zach Riggle for pointing out that this really degrades your video quality a lot – try other settings instead. I’ve had good luck with “Non-ref” so far).

WIth that, a 1080p that we had to stop watching three days ago because it was so awfully choppy now plays as smooth as butter (but not nearly as sticky).

Comments (85) Add Comment | Tags: mac osx vlc mkv 1080p playback problems

Posted By: Vault Jun 23, 2008 09:53:23

You are a godsend! Thank you so much and keep up the good work!

:-)

Posted By: Zach Riggle Jun 29, 2008 18:10:52

Problem is that by selecting 'All' you GREATLY degrade the visual quality. Sure, now the *resolution* is 1920x1080 and it plays fine, but much of the detail is lost. I highly recommend using the Non-ref (Skip the loop filter for frames that are not referenced later) setting if you can, and the Non-key (Skip the loop filter for frames that are not key-frames) if you must.

problems not here?

Posted By: claudio Jul 26, 2008 14:05:20

Dont seem to have that kind of problems at all - on my mac book pro - 2 ghz intel core duo
but thanks for the advise

Thank you!

Posted By: Liz Aug 03, 2008 09:43:26

It's not perfect, but it is actually watchable now, thank you. And thanks to the person in the comments as well; I tried those settings out also and it's not bad. Thanks!

Posted By: rootmaster Aug 22, 2008 11:17:02

http://www.mplayerhq.hu This one fix my problems whit hd

Problems

Posted By: went_dont_9 Sep 03, 2008 05:55:39

"Dont seem to have that kind of problems at all - on my mac book pro - 2 ghz intel core duo
but thanks for the advise"

When you say you don't have problems, do you mean playing back 1080p through your 1080p TV or the laptop's own screen?

.ts file?

Posted By: Lawrence Sep 04, 2008 10:36:44

Thanks for the tip. But I wonder if anyone has managed to play .ts files in Mac OS X? This format is gaining popularity but I don't seem to be able to get them played properly. I've tried VLC (with and without the tweak mentioned in this post) and MPlayer (both the formal release and the CLI version compiled from the latest source), and I either got audio only (no video) or nothing at all.

Any help or hints would be very much appreciated.

PLEX

Posted By: None Sep 10, 2008 09:43:07

I use PLEX with maxed out the cacahe settings. I can stream wireless 1080p mkv files to my TV no problem.

http://elan.plexapp.com/

Thanks

Posted By: Andre Sep 24, 2008 00:04:45

Thanks, this works for me. I tried to use the PLEX payer, but I had frame rate problems. With this, my 1080P movies are running smooth. Thanks again

Posted By: Jeff Oct 06, 2008 14:16:50

Was having some trouble playing 1080i .ts file based content in h264. Upgraded VLC to the latest version (0.93) and made the change suggested to Non-ref frames. Without that it played but jumped a bit (2.33 C2D MBP) now its fine. Thanks, thats great.

Life Saver

Posted By: iheartfood Oct 20, 2008 00:18:13

This was driving me nuts. Thank you very much! Things are going smoothly now.

Ask and you shall be given

Posted By: Simon Oct 28, 2008 10:00:24

Marcwan if i wasn't single and without children i would say that i will be gratefull and your name will be synonym of felicity in my family ...

so thanks dude ...

Thanks Rootmaster!!!

Posted By: Ted Dec 10, 2008 09:53:25

Thankyou! Thankyou!
MPlayer does it all at highest quality without a single drop!
I can even skip halfway through and it only looks like a camera angle change in the movie :D
Awesome!

Thanks

Posted By: ruby Dec 21, 2008 17:09:43

I also find another tutorial:<a href="http://www.moviesmac.com/tutorial/play-mkv-format-mac.html">Play MKV on Mac?</a>

Posted By: xyz Dec 29, 2008 16:22:38

Thanks dude, finally my MBP is able to play MKV files :)

Try "Bits" this for jerky panning:

Posted By: Warren Jan 05, 2009 00:28:11

Many thanks for the suggestions to OP and commentors. Still was finding Pan to be very jerky for Anime, but found changing Quality Level from "Simple" to "Bits" did the trick.

No more choppy HD

Posted By: Harry Jan 22, 2009 02:19:01

All worked for me

Does anyone else notice audio falling out of sync with this fix?

Hard disk speed

Posted By: marcwan Jan 22, 2009 05:55:51

Honestly, I've noticed that hard disk speed has a huge effect on this phenomenon.

The internal drive on my Macbook pro was so, bad, it seems, that I could reduce the choppiness by playing movies off an external USB drive.

I have a desktop Mac with a 7200rpm desktop (3.5") drive now and nothing goes even remotely slow (in all fairness, the processor is a bit faster too).

thanks a lot!

Posted By: zord Feb 14, 2009 04:05:05

thank you so much!
i started beliving in my ppc g5 again :D

Plex

Posted By: chris Feb 23, 2009 13:26:19

Why not try Plex?

www.plexapp.com

Not only will this media player handle 1080p H.264 movies, it will even put the kettle on for you. Oh no wait a minute...

marcvan for President

Posted By: Defleppard from Germany Mar 05, 2009 12:38:58

Thank you so much !
Thats better then 3 Six Packs of Beer!

so thanks dude !!!!

Running smoothly

Posted By: Don Mar 11, 2009 10:39:54

Thank you, now running 1080 nicely on my 2GHz santa rosa, 4Gb ram, Acer Aspire Notebook.

Plex for the win

Posted By: Victor Mar 21, 2009 00:05:10

Plex is working for me too.

VLC (even with the skip loop filter) and Mplayer choke on 1080p content on my 2.4Ghz Macbook Pro. However, Plex handles all my 1080p files perfectly and they play as smooth as butter.

I don't get why everyone is always saying that VLC is the best player ever. It sucks donkey gonads when it comes to 1080p. With Plex, it just works.

Still can't manage

Posted By: TzvetanDacov Mar 21, 2009 13:03:46

I tried everything possible but I still got glitchy playback on 1080p . I'm running 1.5Ghz Intel Core Duo T5250 (2Mb L2 Cache) GForce 8400 m G and 2 Gb Ram . It' about mkv files 1080p ;720p is OK
Please help me understand is this hardware issue ,or it is only software issue

glitchy playback

Posted By: marcwan Mar 23, 2009 05:23:18

honestly, my experiences of late all point to hard disk speed being the biggest problem:

if you've got a 5400rpm laptop hard drive, it's hard to get these playing smoothly, no matter what the VLC settings are. I solved the problem on my laptop by using an external USB 7200rpm laptop drive, and on my desktop, i have a faster disk now, so i hardly notice.

RPM

Posted By: RPM Apr 01, 2009 04:10:23

Doesn't have anything todo with anything. 5400 7200 10,000 15,000 wont make a difference for playback.

mplayer extended > vlc

Posted By: http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/ Apr 18, 2009 01:27:40

http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/

forget vlc. mplayer allows use of experimental ffmpeg codec that allow multithreaded decoding. just check the box to enable it, and it's been damn stable for the last several releases.

THANK YOU!

Posted By: Eddie Apr 18, 2009 09:12:33

This actually worked and you've just saved my day!

THANK YOU! (again ^_^)

Posted By: Cailin Coilleach Apr 19, 2009 06:20:46

Man, I'm so glad I found this... I've had problems playing MKVs for a year now :D

Issues

Posted By: Sohel Apr 20, 2009 14:32:14

I tried both 'non-ref' and 'All', but I still can't play a couple of 1080p files (over 14GB). The problem is that they 'shake' as in there is both up-down and left-right displacement of the frame. The sound is smooth and the picture doesn't seem to be getting stuck - it just dances around a lot.

Most 720p and 1080p mkv files play fine, its just a couple of them that have problems. I'm using a white Macbook, 2.16Ghz, 2Gb ram, 667Mhz bus and I'm running OS X 10.4 (Tiger).

Help!

Re: Issues

Posted By: Sohel Apr 20, 2009 19:08:55

Never mind, I installed XBMC. Works flawlessly!

I also tried mplayer and mplayer extended, but nothing else comes close to how well XBMC works.

THANKS!

Posted By: Armando Apr 26, 2009 18:09:59

Thanks so much MARCWAN!!!!! You helped me a lot! Totally useful info!

Thanks

Posted By: Arshavski Alex Apr 28, 2009 12:21:20

I looked for hours for the solution.
Couldn't imagine it so simple.
Thanks a lot

AMAZING, thanks!

Posted By: Cameron May 11, 2009 22:08:51

This was just what i was looking for, thanks very much. i changed to non-ref and it plays 1080p .mkv perfect now. I was using plex but the letterboxes annoyed the hell out of me (they wernt completely black) and the interface was a PITA.

The way I resoved this

Posted By: Simon Jun 17, 2009 20:43:20

I tried VLC, MPlayer OSX extended first and can not resolve the issue. Finally I tried to copy a shorter movie to my hard disk then played it. It got fixed.
The root cause for me is that I was using a old NTFS-3g driver to access the content on my USB disk. The NFS-3g was quite old and the performance was very poor.
After upgraded it to 4.4, the issue was resolved. The version can be got here at http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/. Good luck.

Posted By: Juan Jul 01, 2009 08:54:35

Thank You, this really worked out for me!

Plex rules!

Posted By: Aayush Arya Jul 14, 2009 09:56:04

Thanks to the anonymous eighth commenter above for mentioning the tip about increasing Plex’s cache size. The VLC trick did not work for me but the one about Plex did. And since the latter is my favourite media center and playback application anyway, I’m thrilled about that. I was actually thinking of selling my six-month old MacBook and replacing with a new MacBook Pro just to be able to play 1080p high definition videos on my Mac. Now I don’t have to. Thanks once again.

thank you is not enough !

Posted By: Benjamin BEJBAUM Sep 25, 2009 18:05:33

Dear Marc, dear commenters, more than one year after writing this post, You made my day !

I was struggling with my 2.4 Ghz MBP between plex and VLC, and here I find, in your comments, the Plex cache tip. I can now keep my MBP in closed clamshell lying under my tv, connected to my synology in GB ethernet, saving hundreds by not buying another piece of hardware to watch HD.

Best,
Ben.

mkv formate video not running smooth on my system

Posted By: ajay Oct 24, 2009 09:15:08

I have lenovo y500 laptop, mkv formate video not running smooth on my system earlier it was running but now it is not please suggest me what to do

Posted By: sweex Nov 07, 2009 01:19:30

I was having the same problem using vlc or divx player runing a 1080p .mkv, altough I don't really like the program it's running without any problem using plex now(I did used the cache tip also ;-) )So if anybody finds something better, you're welcome.

mkv files not running on macbook

Posted By: dval Nov 19, 2009 08:05:30

vlc not good so tried XBMC as recommended........ works brilliantly

great tip

Posted By: Ken Nov 25, 2009 21:32:01

thx so much. Playing aroung with these settings helped a lot. I am using non-key now. Dont even know, what that means, but man, the damm video is playing now. I had to check the box "hurry up". In your screen shot it is not tagged...
Anyway thanks again for your advice !!!

Many thanks

Posted By: Neil Dec 03, 2009 15:40:05

This made my mkv file play like a charm. I am a firm VLC adept for a while now (10 years or so), and I was puzzled it wouldn't work.

Thanks a bunch from the Low Lands,
Neil.

Hero

Posted By: Kevin Dec 10, 2009 20:57:13

You made my day. I just got the new plasma and my friend got me on a great torrent site but I was unable to link the two together. Now watch out baby High Def movies all over the place.

Thanks so much!

Posted By: Merban Dec 26, 2009 00:06:45

Thanks so much! VLC is king again! Can't believe this little setting made that big of a difference! Thanks for sharing the fix.

THANK YOU!!!!

Posted By: Andre Jan 19, 2010 12:11:58

Its smooth like silk. Thank you soo much. I believe in my macbook pro again. :)

Marc you are a star!!!!!!!!!!

plex is better, interesting, but not best

Posted By: lochem Feb 01, 2010 22:04:29

the fix for the VLC preferences did the trick but only for a few minutes, then it was still choppy for me.
i downloaded and started running Plex, which i must say im impressed with over all. quite an impressive user interface.. and the HD playback MKV file was *almost* 100% smooth.
using a MBPro 3gb RAM 2.16 GHz intel core 2 duo

thanks for the posting and the comments...

Thanks

Posted By: Amaan Feb 12, 2010 20:14:32

You rockkk!!! this works perfectly

Plex is the best

Posted By: HDFans Feb 25, 2010 02:08:14

After reading the comments from all the reviewer. Tried changing VLC advanced setting to 'Non-ref', Non Key, etc. Still VLC does not perform up to expectation. Tried Mplayer, horrible, the audio came first before the video. Tried XBMC, terrible download source.

Finally tried Plex, wow! It really impressed me. The program skins and look are awesome and the 1080p play so smooth that VLC and Mplayer is not match at all.

For those who wanted great rendering (w/o any jerking) and lossless video quality. This is great player you must have.

This my true experience.

Verfasser

Posted By: Der Prugler Feb 25, 2010 19:48:01

Maaaaaaaaaaaate. Take a bow son

Thank you

Posted By: Ryan Feb 27, 2010 17:31:07

Thank you very much Marc for your advice. The 1080p Trailer Park Boys 2 file that I downloaded was very choppy on my Late-2007 Macbook. Now, it runs perfectly, without any sort of lag. I was going to give up watching 1080p movies on my Macbook, but finding this article has given me hope. Once again Marc, thank you very much for your help. Please keep up the great work!

Cheers,

Ryan

Thank you continued

Posted By: Ryan Feb 27, 2010 17:35:15

In addition to my previous post, "None" worked OK, but "Non-ref" works PERFECT. For all Mac OSX users out there (I am running 10.6) "Non-ref" is the way to go. Thanks again to Marc.

Cheers,

Ryan

Posted By: deep Mar 10, 2010 14:16:31

thanks its working fine :) g

Posted By: Diana Mar 31, 2010 21:07:43

PLEX is working so fine!!!It is perfect!!!!Thanks very much!

Plex

Posted By: Steve Apr 02, 2010 07:29:26

I tried Plex but it seems to be slightly laggy, I think I will just convert the video over to mp4 and be done with it

Posted By: xmbc Apr 20, 2010 21:41:33

plex works fine with most 1080p but with dtsma-audio tracks i had problems with playback. tried xmbc and it runs smoothly now!

THANKS!

Posted By: Steve Apr 25, 2010 23:25:30

Thanks, this worked great for me!
I was having problems on my new 13" macbook pro with an Nvidia Gforce 9400m graphics card. Very frustrating!
but its all good now

YOU ARE!

Posted By: Martin Dixie Apr 30, 2010 14:48:19

Thank your mother for giving you life, so you could save mine!
YOU ARE A LIFESAVER, oh thx thx thx thx!
It really helped a lot, i can't tell you how happy i am! :D

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Posted By: Thomas Apr 30, 2010 21:28:53

Was just wondering exactly what you describe, just did a quick search thinking "you never know, but really I think it's probably not going to happen' and here you are.

thanks a lot!

MPlayer OSX Extended

Posted By: Fannar Apr 30, 2010 23:44:31

Can recommend http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/

Played 1080p 20GB Avatar really well.

VLC wasn't able to with any of these settings even on a Core2Duo 3GHz iMac. But as you said its a software problem rather than hardware.

MPlayer OSX Extended Indeed

Posted By: Mark May 30, 2010 11:00:22

Neither Plex, VLC (with any of the above settings) nor Quicktime (with Perian installed) would not play Avatar 1080p properly on my MacBook Pro 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo with Snow Leopard 10.6.2. Selecting subtitles within the .MKV chrashes VLC instantly.

As Fannar pointed out: Avatar is a true test to find a decent player. For the real stress test: select the Chapter "First Flight" which demands crazy processor time with fast full frame animation and constant action where literally every pixel changes all the time. Only Mplayer Extended was able to play without noticeable frame dropping.

Be sure to check it out.

PLEX IS THE KING!!

Posted By: Cornelius Jun 13, 2010 21:26:21

Plex did it for me!

Thanks for this post! Love you in a heterosexualway :)

VLC plays!

Posted By: Mauro Jun 14, 2010 05:42:20

Thank you thank you thank you

You are the most AWESOMEST BESTEST!!

Posted By: Muso96 Jun 20, 2010 01:49:58

I just got a 1080p film on my mac caues i was hoping to connect it to my tv. I have yet to connect it to my 42" Full HD tv but while watching through i had the same problem =(. so i searched away finding nothing until 10mins later i found this and it worked.
THANK YOU I F****EN LOVE YOU =D

THIS DOES NOT EXIST ANYMORE

Posted By: Bader Jul 03, 2010 21:53:26

heyy!!!! this doesnt exist anymore!!! i compared the image above to my prefences, “Skip the loop filter for H.264 decoding” is not there =/ . this sucks. all the menu and options in the image is there except for “Skip the loop filter for H.264 decoding”. WHY!?