Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[blgentry]

I've been a big fan of video support on MC for Mac since it was introduced.  It's development has been sorta slow though.  Only one or two features I can remember have been added since it was introduced back in MC21.  Namely de-interlacing support, which was VERY welcome. 

I've been wondering for some time if we will ever see "advanced" video support in MC for Mac.  Specifically, I'm asking about:

1.  Scaling to higher or lower resolutions.
2.  Conversion of one frame rate to another:  EG, 24 fps to 60fps.
3.  Overscan controls.
4.  Expand, stretch, zoom, etc for content that might need it, like 4x3 video in a 16x9 frame, etc.
5.  The other advanced features that are in MadVR / Lav like 10 bit video, the ability to change color spaces (eg 4:2:2), etc.

#3 and #4 exist as controls in the Options for Video on MC for Mac.  But they don't do anything that I can discern.  I'm assuming they are just disabled controls that work on MC for Windows.

If none of these are on the horizon, I'll eventually turn to another video player for HTPC use.  That *might* be MC for Windows, but I highly doubt it.  I would probably end up using one of the other video players for Mac or possibly Linux.

I'd love to see advanced video support in MC for Mac.  But I don't think I'll ever see it.  Hendrick seems un-enthusiastic about Mac in general and video support for it in particular.  I'd love to be wrong, but I don't think I am.

Comments?

Brian.

[blgentry]

I've just been experimenting with Kodi for Mac.  I really hate to say it, but the video quality is discernibly better on Kodi than on MC for Mac.  Motion has far less judder and the sharpness is higher.

Everyone here knows what a huge fan I am of MC.  But I think I'm moving to Kodi for video. 

Brian.

[JimH]

What version of MC are you using?

Can you say whether conversion is a factor?

All formats?

[blgentry]

I'm using MC23.0.65 for Mac.  I'm playing the files "as is" with no conversion that I'm aware of.  The files I tested with are BluRay rips in MKV containers, which have the exact contents of the BluRay; no transcoding was performed.

Brian.

[Hendrik]

1,2 and most of 5 don't make any sense to me. Those things happen anyway. Video is upscaled or downscaled to fit the video window, and its automatically presented appropriately to match the screen refresh rate.
10-bit video should also play just fine, and I don't even know what you refer to with the "ability to change color spaces", video rendering is always in RGB, on Windows or Mac.

If you want the full video experience MC has to offer, there is no way around using Windows, though.
We're not going to re-implement something like madVR for Mac, its far beyond our available resources, so Mac and Linux will remain more on a level of "Red October Standard" then HQ.

[blgentry]

Scaling is explicitly supported by MadVR and Kodi in the form of Bicubic, Lanczos, and others.  That's what I'm asking about with #1.  I'm certain you are aware that presenting video at 24 fps to displays that are not refreshing at integer multiples of 24 causes motion problems.  That's what I'm asking about with #2:  The ability to either do judder reduction, or to explicitly be able to transform one frame rate to another by saying "hey my display is 60Hz, please transform all video to 60Hz so it looks the best it can look."

By color spaces, I was referring to the chroma settings like 4:2:0 for example.  I must have used the wrong term.

But I don't know why I'm even bothering to explain.  Your reaction and your last sentence say it all:  Video is not important in MC for Mac and will likely never receive much attention.  It will certainly never equal madvr + lav.  Because that exists on windows already and you think everyone who wants to do MC video should use windows.  It's disappointing, but not surprising.  So I'll be using something else for video in the near future.

It really is too bad.  I've spent the last few years heralding MC as the best Media Player for Mac and for most any other platform.  I've spent thousands of hours on this forum providing support for what I hoped would become *the* HTPC platform on Mac.  I'm insulted by your response.

I guess I'll have to change my story when it comes to playing video on a Mac.  Kodi looks way better playing video than MC does.  I may just give up on MC altogether.

Brian.

[mattkhan]

what resolution are you using for playback?

[JimH]

23.0.70 is on the Download Page.  Sorry.  It should also be on the Mac23 board. 

[Hendrik]

I never said its not going to get improved, but having an expectation of catching up with Windows/madVR is just unrealistic, and comparing to "Red October Standard" is a more realistic goal.

You have to realize that developing a high-quality video renderer like madVR has taken years already (and the video renderer in Kodi probably has a similar amount of time behind it), and requires quite specialized knowledge, years that MC for Windows benefits from "for free", and that Mac or Linux can't just re-invent in a month, or even a year.

[JimH]

Scaling is explicitly supported by MadVR and Kodi in the form of Bicubic, Lanczos, and others.  That's what I'm asking about with #1.  I'm certain you are aware that presenting video at 24 fps to displays that are not refreshing at integer multiples of 24 causes motion problems.  That's what I'm asking about with #2:  The ability to either do judder reduction, or to explicitly be able to transform one frame rate to another by saying "hey my display is 60Hz, please transform all video to 60Hz so it looks the best it can look."

By color spaces, I was referring to the chroma settings like 4:2:0 for example.  I must have used the wrong term.

But I don't know why I'm even bothering to explain.  Your reaction and your last sentence say it all:  Video is not important in MC for Mac and will likely never receive much attention.  It will certainly never equal madvr + lav.  Because that exists on windows already and you think everyone who wants to do MC video should use windows.  It's disappointing, but not surprising.  So I'll be using something else for video in the near future.

It really is too bad.  I've spent the last few years heralding MC as the best Media Player for Mac and for most any other platform.  I've spent thousands of hours on this forum providing support for what I hoped would become *the* HTPC platform on Mac.  I'm insulted by your response.

I guess I'll have to change my story when it comes to playing video on a Mac.  Kodi looks way better playing video than MC does.  I may just give up on MC altogether.

Brian.

Brian,
Everyone here (JRiver and the forum) is aware of all the help you have been to us and to other people.

But, I think you're too often assigning blame to others.  Hendrik was trying to be helpful.  I believe what he said is correct.  I don't believe he meant in any way to insult you.  Your previous comment about his level of concern for video on a Mac may have irritated him.  I thought it was unnecessary and untrue.

Maybe you could use a few days off.

If you decide to quit the forum, I know you will be missed.

Jim

[blgentry]

what resolution are you using for playback?

Resolution is not settable in any way from MC.  Nor are any other video options.  The resolution of my display is 5120 x 2880, though I believe that it appears to non-OS applications as 2560 x 1440.  I'm guessing that the OS handles upscaling to the native resolution of the display.

23.0.70 is on the Download Page.  Sorry.  It should also be on the Mac23 board.

I believe I have the latest build of MC for Mac, which is 23.0.65.  I haven't seen anything newer on the Mac board or the Beta board.

I never said its not going to get improved, but having an expectation of catching up with Windows/madVR is just unrealistic, and comparing to "Red October Standard" is a more realistic goal.

You have to realize that developing a high-quality video renderer like madVR has taken years already (and the video renderer in Kodi probably has a similar amount of time behind it), and requires quite specialized knowledge, years that MC for Windows benefits from "for free", and that Mac or Linux can't just re-invent in a month, or even a year.

Those are valid points for sure.  But we've had video support on Mac since MC21.  It's been more than 2 years and nothing has changed other than de-interlacing support.  If more is coming, that would be great.  But the response I received here doesn't seem to indicate that any more changes are forthcoming.

Brian.

[Hendrik]

Resolution is not settable in any way from MC.  Nor are any other video options.  The resolution of my display is 5120 x 2880, though I believe that it appears to non-OS applications as 2560 x 1440.  I'm guessing that the OS handles upscaling to the native resolution of the display.

Not sure what you are really asking for here. MC renders videos to your desktop resolution, the real retina resolution even (5120x2880, for increased quality), upscaling or downscaling them as required, on Windows as well as on Mac. The behavior is quite identical here.
MC on Windows can change the resolution, but only with a global setting, not on a per-video basis based on the video resolution or anything like that, because we don't believe that this would be useful anyway. Using the native screen resolution is generally always best.

The only thing Mac cannot do yet is change the refresh rate of the screen, but unless you're connected to a TV, you would likely not really benefit from that much anyway, as PC screens often don't support the typical video refresh rates.

[blgentry]

On the subject of resolution and frame rates, I understand what you are saying.  But the video quality from MC for Mac isn't as good as other players.  It obviously judders, stutters, and even occasionally freezes (very briefly).  That's why I started this thread:  To ask if techniques were going to be applied to MC for Mac to make the video quality on par with other players and/or the Windows version of MC.

I'm not asking for per video resolution changes.  It would be nice to be able to do zooming and/or cropping for content that was originally derived from 4x3 frames like non-anamorphic video for example.  But that's really just a side note feature and not the "big deal" of having very high quality video with advanced scaling algorithms and frame rate compensation to fix judder.

If you think there's no benefit to frame rate adjustment or compensation, on a large desktop monitor, I'm rather surprised by that.  The difference I see between MC's presentation and Kodi's presentation is not subtle or minor.   It's pretty obvious.

Brian.

[Hendrik]

If you think there's no benefit to frame rate adjustment or compensation, on a large desktop monitor, I'm rather surprised by that.  The difference I see between MC's presentation and Kodi's presentation is not subtle or minor.   It's pretty obvious.

You seem to be throwing a lot of different concepts into a big bag of "I don't like how it looks right now", and assuming a whole lot in the process (and always assuming the worst, at that, for some reason). There is a whole array of different techniques to deal with that, and the most useful one - having the display do it - usually doesn't apply to PC monitors, since those often can't do that (and incidentially the only one thats actually implemented inside MC on Windows, and not inhereited by an external component). Thats all I was saying.

In not one word did I say that one doesn't have to handle mismatched refresh rate and video fps in some way. Anyway this is not being productive.

[blgentry]

I had a big response typed up here, including saying that I was sorry if I had offended you.  I think I'll just leave it at that.  Because, as you said, this isn't productive at all.  Oh well...

Brian.

[JimH]

I believe I have the latest build of MC for Mac, which is 23.0.65.  I haven't seen anything newer on the Mac board or the Beta board.

23.0.70 is on the beta board and on the download page.  It wasn't posted to the MC23 for Mac board.  That was our mistake.  Sorry.