Why is VLC slower than MPV/MPlayer?

Every time I try to seek a local video with VLC, there is a noticable lag, as opposed to MPlayer/MPV, no matter what "ultrafast" x264 presets or loop filter skipping is used.

What's the fundamental reason for that?

Solution 1:

Try this :

• Go to the Menu Tools / Preferences
• Click at the bottom at Show Settings on All
• Click on Input / Codecs
• Ensure that Fast seek is checked
• Click Save

Solution 2:

VLC has an issue known for long with seeking, when running it alongside a nVidia GPU. It seems to have a relationship with GPU hardware acceleration, not fully supported.

To try and resolve this, assuming you have the last version of VLC (2.2.1), and if you have a powerful enough CPU, you can deactivate the GPU acceleration: Tools -> Preferences (Simple settings) -> Video -> Uncheck Accelerated video output (Overlay)