I just tried with Mac Catalina 10.15.6 and VLC v.3.0.11.1, and it’s working for me. The screens look a bit different, and the Keep Recent Items options has been moved a bit further down the screen under the Behavior heading. Being objective: for anyone discovering VLC, it's a great multi-purpose player. But for old users: v3 is not still on a par with v2.2.8!:-o I'm essentially having issues with my TV provider streams: - subtitles: way too big even with 'Smaller' selected in the menu (ok, this was not much better in 2.2.8 as the menu options weren't working at all, but at least the subtitles had the right size.
QuickTime is great, but it won’t play an AVI file out of the box or the lesser-known MKV for example. And with the introduction of MacOS Catalina we have had to say goodbye to our beloved QuickTime 7.
QuickTime 7 offered the Pro version for a one time payment whichbasically upgraded the standard QuickTime player adding many usefulvideo editing features and import / export options, I’m still using itto this day! Just not on a Mac running Catalina.
If you try to open an .avi file or .mkv file among many others,QuickTime will give you any one of the following errors:
Or even worse QuickTime will give you a tantalising teaser that isgoing to open the video:
Shortly followed by the familiar, QuickTime can’t open
Vlc Media Player For Mac
Now don’t get me wrong QuickTime has some great features includingscreen recording, but for opening video files you received from a longlost cousin in Eastern Europe it just doesn’t cut themustard! Enter a great & open source piece of software “VLC mediaplayer”. https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
To get started simply head to https://www.videolan.org/vlc/& download the VLC player. For Mac, it will download into your downloads folder:
Open the .dmg file (that’s a disk image in case you wanted to know, notstrictly a file).
And then drag the VLC icon to the Applications icon in the now openedwindow:
This will take a couple of seconds:
Navigate to your Applications folder and double click on the VLC icon:
You should see the message to tell you downloaded this from a webpage click Open:
For ease of access in the future go back to the folder which has your.avi or .mkv or other uncommon video format and either right click onthe file icon and choose Get info or click on the file to highlight itand choose File > get Info.
The Info window will open and from the Open With drop down chose theVLC player:
Next on the same Info window after selecting the VLC player under “OpenWith” click the “Change All…” button:
This will associate all of the files of that particular format with theVLC media player so you don’t have to manually choose which app to openthem with each time.
Now instead of those pesky error messages the file will open in the VLCplayer:
The interface is very easy to use and shares many of the same featuresand buttons you find in most media players.
VLC player also has a media browser, which includes access to Internetradio stations, and allows you to organise your media. However the builtin Apps such as Music (iTunes), Photos already provide these servicesand they are better integrated with your other Apple products so it’sbetter to just use VLC player to open those files which QuickTIme cannotmanage.
There is a very well documented wiki on how to use VLC player and allof its great features over at VLC’s website.
And don’t forget although this is free to use you can still make adonation to the VLC organisation to help support the on-goingdevelopment for VLC.
I hope this has cured another Mac headache for you, let us know whatyou think in the comments below.
Hi
Just purchased a Startech USB C to HDMI 2 adapter as a test really... I want to try playing back HDR graded content from my editing/colour software. I figured I'd playback some hdr content with VLC to test but although it looks good (colour space conversion seems to kick in nicely, if a bit saturated) the HDR system message doesnt seem to appear on my TV (LG) as it does with other content. I read somewhere that VLC doesnt support HDR on a mac - is this still the case? Anyone have any ideas how I can output hdr 4k material from my 2019 macbook pro? If not, struggling to see what the point of an upgraded HDMI adapter acutally is... Vlc Media Player For Mac Catalina Island
Thanks!