Good software for watching videos on Mac?

Solution 1:

This answer will be short: VLC. Has everything you need except the rotation. It's a media player, not a video editor.

To alter the playback speed in VLC: Go to to Playback → Playback Speed. You can also alter the playback speed using ⌘= and ⌘-.

For rotation, as user Iwillnotexist Idonotexist notes in the comments below, you can go to Window → Video Effects → Geometry → Transform.

Bonus: A list of some VLC keyboard shortcuts for OS X.

Solution 2:

I use mplayer in its Cocoa form MplayerX like VLC it can't edit the video but just plays it. (There is a version in the Mac App Store but it is old as Apple does not now allow some of the functions the are needed (although I had no issues with it until I upgraded to Yosemite)

To increase speed go to AVS->Increase Speed (or decrease) or ⌘] or ⌘[

I prefer the interface to VLC, it feels more OS X integrated to me. Also I use skip forward or back a lot and that seems to be better than VLC's version of it.

Solution 3:

I use Movist. It's a native video player that used to be free but is now sold at the App Store. Old versions can still be downloaded for free, but they use an old version of ffmpeg that doesn't even support Hi10P, and the application has changed a lot since then.

Both Movist and MPlayerX have nicer UIs than VLC in my opinion, and they are also faster at seeking and at opening files. Both Movist and MPlayerX also support restoring the playback position but VLC doesn't. Movist is a bit more customizable than MPlayerX though: it supports for example centering subtitles vertically and using a custom implementation for full screen windows.