This hint suggests a quick and easy way to change the amount of milliseconds VLC caches for videos. The purpose is to provide an easy method to increase the number of cached seconds when you're streaming a video over your local network, and decrease them when you're watching a video that is a local file -- without having to navigate the complex menu structure in VLC's preferences each time you want to switch. It is implemented using two Automator apps; for best mileage, I recommend using them in conjunction with Quicksilver.
I watch a lot of videos on my Mac, and I watch them all with VLC. Sometimes I stream them from my dedicated server (a linux box on my network in my closet mounted over samba), and sometimes I watch them locally. VLC defines several "access modules," or ways for the application to access videos. For example: File, HTTP, FTP, etc. Both local videos and videos on a samba mount are accessed with the File module.
By default, the file module caches 300ms of the video before it starts to play. If the file is on your local machine, it starts almost instantly, and (usually) does not skip or buffer at all during playback. That's good and well for a local file, but for a file on a samba (nfs/afp/whatever) mount getting streamed over the local network, it's not enough. The video constantly pauses and skips while it waits for data to come across the wire. Before I started tinkering with the settings, I was copying videos from my samba mount to my machine before watching them, just to side step this problem. Then I discovered that the caching time is configurable. To change it, go to VLC » Preferences » Input / Codecs » Access Modules » File » [click the 'Advanced' checkbox]. Then you can change the value for 'Caching value in ms.' I use 5000 (5 seconds) when I'm streaming, and the default of 300 when I'm local.
This can also be configured by editing the file ~/Library/Preferences/VLC/vlcrc, specifically the file-caching key/value pair. However, with this method, you must quit VLC before changing the file.
With that, here's the basic flow of my workflows [108KB download]:
- Quit VLC
- Pause 1 second
- Execute shell command
- Pause 1 second
- Launch VLC
[open-apple] [space] netwo [enter]
[open-apple] [space] loca [enter]
Of course, you'll have to do this several times and manually choose the correct app to train VLC to open network_video.app instead of Network Prefernces.app.
[robg adds: These workflows could probably be modified to work in 10.5 (using shell scripts for the delays), but as written, they require 10.5.]

