Mac OS X Request

[Florian G. Pflug]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 08:37:53PM -0500, John Lianoglou wrote:
> I?d like to make a quick request for the OS X version of vlc: support for
> ?older? Macs equipped with DVD players. Now I?m not talking about third
> party DVD drives, mind you... All Apple-original, shipped-with-the-computer
> stuff. It seems Apple might just leave us out in the cold, so to speak. Of
> course, the DVD player on our computers is a bit different ? if I remember
> correctly the ?older? macs (I have a Powerbook Bronze G3) use a hardware key
> for encrypted DVDs... Or maybe I got it backwards... I?m sure you?re much
> more aware of the precise root of the issue.
vlc should run on any mac that can run OSX 10.1. But it needs an graphic
card that is capable of "YUV Overlay". This means that the graphic card can
transform images from one colorspace (YUV) into another (RGB) in hardware
(not using the main processor of the mac).

If (but I'm not sure weather it does or not) quicktime provides a "software
fallback" in case the graphic card doesn't support YUV-Overlay, vlc should
even run on macs without YUV-Overlay. 

But since
	.) All news Macs include graphic cards with YUV-Overlay support
	.) vlc doesn't even run smoothly on my G3/350

vlc will nevery run smoothly on older (slower) macs - and if the YUV-RGB
transformation has to be done in software, too...
Well, movies degrade to slideshows...

Using the hwardware DVD-decoder is IMHO very difficult. There is no
documentation on how the OS supports those decoders. There isn't even the
slightest bit of API documentation on this.

So - I fear vlc won't support hardware decoders in the near future - unless
apple changes it's mind, and provides us with documentation on how to access
those hardware decords - with I doubt they will do...

Sorry for not giving you better news...

greetings, Florian Pflug



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