HD Video lagging - is it HDD? RAM?

billy3785 said:

But will either of these fix the problem? or is it my processor?

Click to expand...

Processor.

2hours of movie, 12Gigs, I'd risk to say it's a 1080p video.
High Definition content is very CPU demanding.

My MBP 2.2Ghz can play 720p content, but above that... not really

Try Movist, and if that does not help, analyse the video via VideoSpec and add the report to your next post.

Btw, bumping a thread within less than 150 minutes is not really welcome, as it is kind of against the rules. And as this board is quite US centric, many people are asleep or waking up now over there.

corrspt said:

Processor.

2hours of movie, 12Gigs, I'd risk to say it's a 1080p video.
High Definition content is very CPU demanding.

My MBP 2.2Ghz can play 720p content, but above that... not really

Click to expand...

My iMac form 2007 with 2GHz can play 1080p content (14GB) just fine, it just downscales it.

Playing HD content smoothly depends as much on the format as on the processor. I could get my PowerBook G4 to play 1080p back at full framerate if it was in Apple Intermediate Codec.

You can use NicePlayer to get some GPU acceleration as well.

spinnerlys said:

My iMac form 2007 with 2GHz can play 1080p content (14GB) just fine, it just downscales it.

Click to expand...

Which player do you use?

It's not really my area, but my understanding tells me that in order for the program to downscale a video, it has to be able to decode it first, and the problem is there. Decoding is slow (H.264 1080p video). On a windows machine with CoreAVC I can decode with that kind of CPU but there's no alternative, as far as i know, for OSX.

Or is your video player, transcoding in real-time?

Anyway, let me know which player you use, If it enables me to play 1080p content, I'll gladly use it.

corrspt said:

Which player do you use?

It's not really my area, but my understanding tells me that in order for the program to downscale a video, it has to be able to decode it first, and the problem is there. Decoding is slow (H.264 1080p video). On a windows machine with CoreAVC I can decode with that kind of CPU but there's no alternative, as far as i know, for OSX.

Or is your video player, transcoding in real-time?

Anyway, let me know which player you use, If it enables me to play 1080p content, I'll gladly use it.

Click to expand...

Movist, as linked to above in my post you partially quoted.

I can give you the specs of the video, when I'm home and also show you the CPU percentage.

spinnerlys said:

Movist, as linked to above in my you partially quoted.

Click to expand...

Damn, missed the link, thanks for the heads up

spinnerlys said:

I can give you the specs of the video, when I'm home and also show you the CPU percentage.

Click to expand...

If it's not to much of a hassle it would be useful, thanks

And here it goes:


***** First Analyzed File Results *****

*** General Parameters ***
- Name: And More Is On Its Way.mkv
- Container: Matroska
- Creation Date: 2010-01-27 8:25:07 PM
- Size: 13440.5 MiB
- Duration: 2:06:50
- Bitrate: 14.8 Mbps
- Encoding Library: libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1
- Encoding Application: mkvmerge v2.9.7 ('Tenderness') built on Jul 1 2009 18:43:35

*** Video Track Parameters ***
- Format: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
- Size: 11.5 GiB (88%)
- FourCC: avc1
- Track number(s): 0
- Bitrate: Max.: Undefined
Average: 13.0 Mbps
Min.: Undefined
- Frame rate (fps): Max.: Undefined
Average: 23.976
Min.: Undefined
- Bitrate mode: Undefined
- Encoding profile: High@L4.1
- Resolution: 24 bits
- Width (Pixel number): 1920
- Height (Pixel number): 800
- Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1:1
- Display aspect ratio: 12:5
- Chroma subsampling format: YUV420p
- TV standard: Undefined
- Interlacing: Progressive
- Encoding library: x264 core 68 r1183M f21daff
- Additional Parameters: CABAC: Yes
Reference Frames: 5
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) ratio: 0.353
Muxing mode: Unknown@4.1

*** Audio Track(s) Parameters ***
- Format: DTS Coherent Acoustics
- Size: 1.34 GiB (10%)
- FourCC: 0x2001
- Number(s) and language(s): 2: Undefined
- Details: -
- Profile: Undefined
- Bitrate: 1 510 Kbps
- Bitrate mode: Constant
- Resolution: 24 bits
- Rate: 48.0 KHz
- Channel(s): 5:1 - 6 channels
- Position: Front: L C R, Surround: L R, LFE
- Encoding Library: Undefined
- Additional Parameters: Not available

*** Miscellaneous ***
- Subtitle(s): No Subtitle
- Metadata: Album: Undefined
Part number: Undefined
Track name: Undefined
Track name number: Undefined
Performer: Undefined
Screenplayer/Writer: Undefined
Genre: Undefined
Encoded date: UTC 2009-09-21 08:33:11
Comment: Undefined
Album artist: Undefined
Grouping: Undefined
Copyright: Undefined



It plays the whole time while I make this post and fancy other stuff without hiccups.

Plex is a good one to try.

It'll tap into OS X's hardware decoding for H.264 video. It doesn't appear to be full bit-stream decoding, as CPU use is still around 40% on my 2GHz 2008 unibody MacBook. In Windows for the same file, CPU use hovers around 5%. Thats H.264 1080p straight off a blu-ray disc. Plex is also fast enough to decode full 1080p VC-1 straight off a blu-ray disc without hardware assistance. Will use about 70% total CPU time and make the fan spin up, but it works.

Plex manages to play HD content on my MacBook. VLC chokes.