For years, my go-to video player was IINA. It played most things, and it mostly worked. But as someone who uses Picture-in-Picture (PiP) constantly while working, one tiny frustration grew into a deal-breaker.
IINA's PiP is just a box.
It only has "pause." If I wanted to seek, scrub to a different part, or even just see what episode was playing, I had to break my entire workflow. I'd have to leave my work, find the main app window, make the change, and go back. It drove me nuts.
I looked around. Elmedia? Same basic PiP. VLC? No PiP at all, and the UI... I also missed having a simple volume boost.
I decided to build a "quick" app for myself that just had a great PiP.
That was the start of a long rabbit hole.
The "Quick App" Became an Obsession
My "quick app" became an obsession. The more I dug into Apple's native technologies for video playback, the more I realized how much performance and quality other players were leaving on the table.
I started running tests. And the results were shocking.
I ran a demanding 4K 60fps HDR video on my m1 MacBook. The results speak for themselves:
Player
| CPU Usage | RAM Usage | Energy Impact | Video Quality | |
| Vidi (My App) | <30% | ~300MB | < 30 | Perfect HDR, true-to-life color |
| IINA | ~400% | ~1.6GB | ~10,000+ | Stuttering, terrible HDR |
| Movist Pro | ~200% | ~1.8GB | ~8,000 | Poor performance |
| Elmedia | ~120% (spikes) | ~500MB | ~400+ | Inconsistent, buggy |
| Infuse | ~50% | ~300MB | ~200 | Closer, but less efficient |
| VLC | Better (SDR) | - | - | No HDR. Washed-out colors. |
This is not a typo. IINA, my old go-to, was using 400% CPU to play a video that Vidi handles with 30% CPU.
By building natively and leveraging Apple's tools, I had created a player that isn't just a little better. It's in a different league. It delivers picture-perfect color reproduction that looks raw and true-to-life, not oversaturated. And it just sips battery.
Audio That’s as Good as the Picture
Once the video was perfect, I turned to the sound. Most players treat audio as an afterthought. I wanted it to be a feature.
I spent months engineering an audio suite from the ground up:
A Voice Boost so you can finally stop straining to hear dialogue.
A Cinema Effect for that punchy, theater-like sound with deep bass.
Dynamic Sound that intelligently adjusts the EQ for dialogue, music, or action.
Spatial Audio for immersive 3D sound.
And yes, a Volume Boost that goes up to 4x (400%) beyond the max, with minimal distortion.
The result is sound that is richer, clearer, and more powerful than any other video player I've tested.
The Player I Always Wanted
With that rock-solid foundation, I built every feature I'd ever wanted:
An Advanced PiP (The original spark!): Full timeline scrubbing with hover-preview, subtitle controls, and episode info, all in the floating window.
A Stunning Ambient Mode: A beautiful backlight effect that extends your video's colors beyond the screen.
Intro/Outro Skipping: Automatically skips intros and outros by reading video chapter metadata (if supported), letting you binge-watch uninterrupted.
Smart Resume: Remembers your spot in every video.
Online Subtitle Search: Find subtitles from OpenSubtitles instantly.
Intelligent Filename Display: Cleans up "Title.S01E04.1080p.Web-DL.mkv" into "Title - S01E04".
Casting to Any Screen: Stream to AirPlay, Chromecast, and DLNA.
...and so much more.
Try Vidi Today
Vidi started as a quest to fix a single, annoying feature. It became a mission to build the perfect, no-compromise video player for the Mac.
It’s fast, light, powerful, and built with a passion for quality.
The core Vidi player, with its best-in-class performance and universal format support, is completely free.
To try the advanced features like the Immersive Audio Suite, Advanced PiP, Ambient Mode, and Casting, you can start your free 14-day trial of Vidi Pro right inside the app.
I built this for myself, but I can't wait to share it with you.