New Versions of Real and Quicktime Alternative
Apple's Quicktime and Realmedia's Realplayer are two heavy - some would say bloated - programs that use lots of system resources while they are running or playing media files. They also occupy quite some place on the hard drive and since they run on system start by default, slow down the system on top of all that as well.
One would assume that they at least start up faster than players who do not make use of all these options but that is not the case as well. Programs like VLC Media Player start up faster.
It may therefore be a good idea to look for alternatives that you can run instead, that do not slow down your system that much and speed up the loading of media files.
Real Alternative can play all media files that Real Player is capable of playing including streaming content and content on websites. Quicktime Alternative has the same functionality as Apples Quicktime software. What makes both alternatives great is that they do not have background processes running and that they do not contain advertisement, forced registration offers or other annoying things that the official tools include.
Both players use less resources than the original players which is great if you are using a computer that is not running on the latest hardware. I suggest to uninstall the original players and install the alternative versions because of that. Quicktime Alternative is also working with iTunes if you install those tools in a certain order. First Quicktime Alternative, then iTunes + Quicktime, uninstall Quicktime, install Quicktime Alternative again.
If you are however interested in the original QuickTime you can download the latest version of QuickTime from the Apple Support website.
For Real Player, you would have to visit the Real Networks website to download the media player from there to your computer.
Please also note that both QuickTime and RealPlayer alternatives have not been updated for quite some time now, which means that it is no longer advised to install those on your system. You can however install a media player like VLC or SMPlayer instead which support all the formats supported by those two applications. Just install the players on your system and you are ready to play all formats that QuickTime and Real Player support.
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Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?