Fix VLC skipping problem on your Mac

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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.