Which codecs etc? Flip4Mac, Perian, what?

Feek

Feek

Feek

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I rebuilt my Mac yesterday because when I moved from the old system to it, I had everything ticked in Mobileme preferences so I ended up with all the rubbish stuff on here that I never really needed. It just seemed sensible to have a nice shiny clean new system.

On my old build I had both Perian and Flip4Mac on it, but are they both needed? What's the bare minimum of sensible media playback codecs and stuff that I really need to install?

I'd like to keep this all mean and clean :)
 
Feek said:
What's the bare minimum of sensible media playback codecs and stuff that I really need to install?
Click to expand...
Perian. You can do without Flip4Mac, but IMO there are too many WMVs about to stop its absence being an annoyance.

Also, in before 'VLC' - Installing a duplicate video playback application to the one integrated with the system is not 'mean and clean' :p
 
I stick with Perian and Flip4Mac annoying having to have two codecs, but it seems to handle most of what I throw at it :)

WOuld be nice if there was a single codec pack, like the CCPC on Windows.
 
Perian
Flip4Mac

Usually throw on VLC just because it can play some crazy formats (.ISO) etc
 
Well I've installed Perian and Flip4Mac but although I've got Handbrake on (and have already converted a couple of movies for the Apple TV, I've not bothered with VLC. Why would I need it?
 
For the latest version (0.9.3)

No more internal DVD decryption
Yeah, we know, no one reading this is going "Oh wow, no more DVD decryption--what a great new feature!" but...deal.

HandBrake will dynamically load VLC's copy of libdvdcss if you have it in your Applications folder in Mac OS X, and if you're on Linux, and you want to live on the wild side, you can install libdvdcss on your system and get the same effect.

Translation of the last paragraph from nerdese:

We're not about to stop you from choosing to decrypt DVDs. If you're on a Mac, and you have VLC 0.9.x installed, you won't even notice the internal capability's gone. If you're on Linux, all you have to do is install a library.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing it's to stop any legal troubles :)
 
Feek said:
Well I've installed Perian and Flip4Mac but although I've got Handbrake on (and have already converted a couple of movies for the Apple TV, I've not bothered with VLC. Why would I need it?
Click to expand...

Plays the obscure file formats that Quicktime doesn't support e.g. direct from ISO.

I can't go in to why VLC is needed because it's to do with Handbrake's stance on copy protection (it doesn't break the newer copy protection on discs, so well).

Have a look on the handbrake forums.. VLC is recommended if you rip DVDs.

EDIT: Beatded
 
Sorry to revive an old thread.

Does anyone know whether using Perian and Flip4Mac is better or worse than VLC when it comes to battery life...I would assume using QT with those codecs would cause the battery life to decrease at a higher rate due to larger CPU usage (just a guess - don't actually know the CPU usage of either).

Anyone note a difference in quality between these two methods? (Because I have noticed that Windows VLC is better quality than Mac VLC - which I find quite strange)
 
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