OS 10.12.6

I downloaded a few movies and there is no audio. I have VLC as my default. I tried playing a couple more and noticed that quicktime player was used and the audio was fine. I also noticed that QT was my default although I never chose it. How did this happen? Is it because I now have sierra? Can I revert back to VLC and regain the audio?

jaybass

You said…
and

So if the movies played fine when quicktime player was used, why do you want to revert to VLC where there was no audio? Or am I missing something?

I was somewhat perturbed that my default was decided by someone/somehow without my preference.

However, I suppose QT is as good as VLC so I will just leave it at that

You are not missing anything.

Thanks, jaybass

I believe that QT, since it's a native Mac app, is set as default for any new downloads...that you've got to reset your pref to make it VLC.

Remember that movies are containers that contain separate streams. Those streams are usually video, audio, and subtitles. Each of those streams can be encoded in its own format, and may not be a common format to find inside a given container. Just because you can open the container (MP4, MPEG, MKV, etc) doesn't mean you know how to decode all of the streams within it. (Sorenson, Motion Jpeg, RM, H.264, MPEG2, VOB, etc for video, AVI, MP3, WAV, etc for audio)

Lately the problem with OS upgrades has been that "codec packs" tend to be OS-specific, and some of the recent updates have been killing off old, unsupported codec packs and causing videos we used to be able to watch to no longer be playable at all or to lose sound. ("perian" comes immediately to mind) To continue watching those, you have to either find a new codec pack, or a player with the codecs built-in. (as VLC or Mplayer often does)

One thing I see a lot is with MKV files taken from bluray. MKV allows codecs not normally found in other common containers, most specifically MPEG2-A/V. This is incredibly convenient for ripping BR discs, because that's their native format. All you have to do is decrypt the data, you don't have to transcode anything. It's a direct, lossless, fast rip. But macs haven't ever been able to play MPEG2 directly, so MKV files have always been a bit of a pain and require VLC usually to watch. That's not to say that ALL mkv rips will be that way, but a lot of them are because it's easy and it's lossless. The only time you're going to see other than that is when they've been downsized to a smaller resolution. Bluray rips can easily get over 45gb, and most people today seem to prefer around 7gb downloads, so the video needs to be scaled down quite a bit and usually with a lower frame rate. Last I looked, a typical bluray is around 13gb. Transformers was the biggest thing I ran into, it had an insane data rate and was one of the 45'ers.

Thank you for that comprehensive reply. I must confess that I am quite ignorant of most of what you say but I will print it and try and digest some of it anyway.

I just checked a few MKV movies and they were between 2 and 7+ gb.

jaybass

Odd. I still use VLC as my default video player.

Have no issues at all with audio or video. Neither has the "System" arbitrarily reverted to QT as the default since I installed "High Sierra."

Maybe trashing VLC ; then, downloading and installing a new DMG copy of the latest version will help. Highlight and Right-click on a video, select GET INFO, and set VLC as default for all videos . . . as one would usually do for setting a format of one type (MP3, MP4, AVI, etc.) to open with the same (VLC) app.

Just a thought . . .

P.S. You have probably checked already, but in case you haven't. Look at VLC preferences and confirm that the ENABLE AUDIO box has not (for some reason?) been deselected.