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When VLC 2.1.3 loops a short video of about 600 ms (animation, uncompressed, 100 MB), there's a big delay of ~200 ms when it loops from the end back to the start. Windows Media Player can't even play it properly at 60 FPS. I remember that there used to be mplayer2.exe in Windows 2000 which was able to do that, but I can't find it anymore.

Which program can loop videos flawlessly?

Jason C
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Andreas Haferburg
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    I've never had looping issues with VLC nor issues with 60 FPS uncompressed video in WMP; 100MB/0.6s is a decent amount of bandwidth but small enough to fit in a cache. Can you give some more details about the format? You can try [mplayer](http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html) (Windows binaries are a little down the page); it's based on ffmpeg and has served me well in the past. It might handle the file better. Also in VLC see if "loop one" provides better looping than "loop all" (click the loop button twice). – Jason C Jun 21 '14 at 21:40
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    @JasonC It's an AVI, VLC says "Codec: 24 bits RGB (RV24)". I also tried VLC 2.0.8, same issue. When it reaches the end, the progress bar quickly fills yellow before playing the video again, maybe indicating that it's buffering. Is there some setting that I can change so it keeps the file in memory? There's no difference for me between "loop one" and "loop all". – Andreas Haferburg Jun 22 '14 at 08:20

1 Answers1

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VLC seems to reinitialize the codecs or something every time through. I am unaware of any way to stop this.

However, I can get videos to loop smoothly with mplayer. Windows binaries are on that page (Windows download page, choose appropriate platform, just below news section).

To install it just extract it somewhere. Then on the command line (or via a shortcut or a file association), run:

mplayer videofile.xyz -loop 0

And it should loop smoothly forever. To start in full screen mode:

mplayer -fs videofile.xyz -loop 0

Make sure you put the -loop 0 last. If you put it before the file name then mplayer will restart on every loop. If you put it after then it runs smoothly. I don't know why but apparently it's a very old quirk (or maybe it's by design, I don't know, -loop is actually rather flexible) (also note the OSD issue mentioned there has long since been resolved).

Jason C
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  • When I put `-loop 0` last at least it doesn't restart each time, but there's still a loud click/pop between in loop – Michael Oct 15 '22 at 01:20
  • @Michael I don't think it reinitializes audio on each replay (although I could be wrong). Maybe open the video's audio track in an audio editor (I know Audacity can open audio tracks, probably others) and check to see if the audio itself actually loops cleanly; maybe there's some gradual DC offset or something that creates a click when transitioning from the end to the start. Or maybe in that video the audio track is a little shorter than the video track or has some other timing issue? You could try it with other videos and see if it's unique to the video vs. an mplayer thing. – Jason C Oct 15 '22 at 04:43
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    It's a WAV file; if I open it in Audacity and loop it there it plays flawlessly. Since that's the only thing that works for me I guess that's the route I'll have to take. :-) – Michael Oct 15 '22 at 13:53
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    @Michael Darn, wish I had some tips for you. Wonder why mplayer is making it pop, . – Jason C Oct 17 '22 at 07:00