Fix VLC skipping problem on your Mac

Posted by in Mac on Oct 2nd, 2009 | Comments

I love VLC. The simple reason: it comes in a package. No clumsy codec downloads or crappy, hard to update codec packs. So when I thought of switching to Mac (will talk about that during the coming weeks), I was happy to see that VLC was there.

But VLC on Mac comes packed with a huge problem. All your movies, TV Shows skip randomly and the whole  experience is not perfect at all. It feels like playing from a badly scratched DVD. The surprising thing is that the same videos work flawlessly in QuickTime + Perian, which by the way is way better than any windows-based codec pack.

The good news is that after Googling and fiddling around with VLC Preferences, I’ve finally found a simple solution. Turns out, the problem is not with VLC but with the default settings that it comes with. Here is what you need to do to fix it.

  • Open VLC and goto VLC->Preferences from the Menu Bar on the top.
  • Select All instead of Basic to open the Advanced Preferences interface.
  • Expand Access Modules and select File.
  • Change the Caching Value from default 300 to 1000 (Or higher if the problem persists).

So that’s it. VLC on Mac plays videos perfectly as it should.

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Comments

One Response to this post

  1. Andre says:
    March 7, 2010 at 8:31 AM

    Thanks but didn't stop mine from skipping.

    It only happens when I click pause and play again.

    Any other clue?

    Reply