[vlc] OS X 10.4 (Tiger), CoreVideo and HDTV...

[Matthew Neilson]

Hey there,

Over the last couple of months I have been reading about the potential 
of Apple's new CoreVideo API, and was wondering if anyone (DJ?) could 
fill me in on what might (or will?) be possible regarding the OS X port 
of VLC.

For starters, is there any truth to the rumor that, if implemented in a 
player such as VLC, CoreVideo may allow for seamless playback of 1080i 
(60fps) high-definition transport streams on the current line-up of 
Powerbooks? As far as I am aware, no one has observed 'perfect' 
playback of 1080i *.ts files on a G4-based Mac. However, if I'm 
understanding things correctly, CoreVideo will allow for the massive 
amount of (currently untapped) power in the GPU to be used to its full 
capacity, therefore giving older machines a new lease of life in the 
video-playing stakes. Correct?

Now, taking this a little bit further, my 1GHz TiBook (ATI Mobility 
Radeon 9000, 64MB DDR) can *almost* play 1080i transport streams using 
VLC 0.7.2 - it's watch-able, but there clearly a quite a few dropped 
frames. In theory, could my graphics card give the extra push that is 
needed for seamless playback?

Also, is it at all likely for developers of the OS X port to include 
support for CoreVideo in future versions of VLC? Of course, it's 
clearly something that would have to be specific to the OS X port, and 
I haven't the slightest idea as to how easy or difficult a task it 
would be for someone to implement this, but is it something you might 
look into?

Finally, would a feature such as this be difficult to include without 
causing problems for people running VLC on pre-Tiger versions of OS X? 
Or could it be a hidden preference (such as the glorious OpenGL 
semi-transparent/rotating cube effect) which requires finding and 
turning on?

Cheers - and, as it can't possibly be said often enough, many thanks 
for developing such an indispensable application,


-Matt

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