I’m sure I’ll want to refine and update it later, but right now I felt the need to jot this down. I won’t get into ripping, transcoding or conversion, this is all about playback.

Based on the news that the VLC team has had roadblocks from Apple I have only one thing to say: Apple is a corporation that has to abide by contracts and that means DRM (Digital Rights Management). VLC can ignore or remove some DRM restrictions, especially with DVDs, hence it’s usefulness. To expect Apple to openly support a product that might violate any of the undisclosed contractual obligations they must have with big media corporations is silly. Love it or hate it, that is our system. Plus, the market is still reeling from the boom in digital content delivery and it’s a mess.

Next, Apple’s long-in-the-tooth Quicktime API is finally getting a rebuild starting with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. If you asked me I would tell you that it’s going to be transitional for a while, but this is probably a good thing given the long life that Quicktime has had with an older “Classic” Mac OS code base. That means Quicktime APIs are a moving target. That is possibly one reason Apple hasn’t published a lot of info or willingly assisted an open source project like VLC. There has to be a lot more work to do before that can happen.

I like and use VLC from time-to-time. If anything I’d congratulate the team for getting this far while dealing with so many confusing formats and APIs. It’s a little engine that could, GUI for Mac OS X aside. I hope the news of their current predicament helps rustle up more support.

In the meantime what can an OS X user who aquires a MKV (Matroska Multimedia Container), M2TS or any other video container do? As of this writing it comes down to these tools:

VLC – Well duh. Been a standby for a long time. Worth having around for more than one reason. Much buggier than the other players I’m about to mention, but still a worthy app.

Perian – the only one of it’s kind, a Quicktime Plug-in that adds support for MKV, DivX and a slew of other confusing and convoluted formats. Load it and Quicktime Player 7.x is your bitch for the most part. Note: I don’t have an Intel Mac, so I can’t comment on the Snow Leopard compatibility with Quicktime X and Perian, if any. This is the easiest way to start playing a whole boatload of non-Apple native codecs. Includes 5.1 surround sound or DTS passthrough if you have the hardware for that.

Movist – nice slick player that is in a league of it’s own. Runs great and plays everything I’ve thrown at it.

MPlayer OSX Extended – a cleaned up MPlayer derivative that works better than VLC (for me). Some 1080p clips might need some tweaking of the “frameskip” pref, but otherwise this is a easy to use way to play most everything. Also includes 5.1 surround sound or DTS passthrough.

Plex – A media center/player that is Intel and OS X 10.5 Leopard only. It’s designed for keyboard or Apple Remote control and is essentially Front Row on steroids. Slick.

Miro – A media center/player for PPC and Intel Macs that ties into torrent networks. More features and complexity than some might want. Offers lots of subscriptions that foreshadow what TV is going to look like in a few more years.

If you’re struggling with playback on OS X these are the better tools to try.