Looking to purchase Mac Mini, questions regarding Handbrake usage

[philipma1957]

Originally Posted by giocav89

Yeah a lot of this is starting to go way over my head. After realizing the Retinas are up on the apple store, I've made my FINAL decision and decided to go with this 13":

http://store.apple.com/ca/product/FD...retina-display

I was really getting a Mac Mini to hold me over with my current computer until a possible retina air came out. However, the waiting game is getting old and this meets most of my needs above and beyond. That and I can't justify dropping $800 on a mini and most likely $1500 on a laptop within the next 6 months. At that point I might as well get a maxed out 15" retina which is out of my budget. The encode times might not be super fast compared to Quad-Core as mentioned by some of you, but at 3-4 hours, as some of you have posted, I can live with that.

Thanks for the help guys!

do us a favor when you get it and test it. You said your encodes were 8-11 hours let us know if they drop to 3-5 hours. Or whatever they do. thanks.

also remember you have a 2 week return period if you do not like it.

[giocav89]

Originally Posted by philipma1957

do us a favor when you get it and test it. You said your encodes were 8-11 hours let us know if they drop to 3-5 hours. Or whatever they do. thanks.

also remember you have a 2 week return period if you do not like it.

So I ended up going with a 13" Retina MacBook Bro 2.5 i5, 8GB Ram, 256GB SSD. As far as the screen, I was pretty much disappointed immediately. After just a few minutes of browsing online on Safari and going to my desktop (gray background) I immediately saw heavy signs of image retention. The toolbar was visible, ads as black boxes etc etc. It was painfully obvious. I performed a "checkerboard" test if you will and left the image open for 15 minutes. After 20 minutes of the removing the image, there is still faint IR.

The encoding, however, has been great! An 18GB file encoded using Handbrake "High Profile" preset (I use this one because I assume it gives the best quality while still producing smaller files) took 4 hours compared to ~10 hours it was previously taking. Average FPS was 9.73.

Basically, the laptop suits my needs but I have become greedy. I realized I can make the jump to the 15", have the benefits of the quad-core, and just use my iPad for school instead of carrying it around all day.

I am annoyed that I will have to return and reorder and resetup everything but I think and HOPE I am making the right choice. Just wanted to give everyone an update and share some information that may benefit others.

[throAU]

I have a 15" i7 and haven't tried encoding a BD with it, but DVDs take about 20-30 minutes

It pushes all 8 virtual CPUs, so if you do go to a 15", it will be significantly faster again....


Oh and even on windows - quicksync is a mixed bag. Fast yes. Image quality takes a hit though.

[Mr. Retrofire]

Originally Posted by throAU

Oh and even on windows - quicksync is a mixed bag. Fast yes. Image quality takes a hit though.

QuickSync(QS)-encoded videos are for your mobile devices, not for your HDTV (except AirPlay). ;-)

And Ivy Bridge CPUs support better QS-encoding-settings, compared to Sandy Bridge (depends on your encoding software):

Originally Posted by AnandTech

From:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/t...770k-review/21

Intel's latest drivers now allow for a selectable tradeoff between image quality and performance when transcoding using Quick Sync. The option is exposed in Media Espresso and ultimately corresponds to an increase in average bitrate. To test image quality and performance, I took the last Harry Potter Blu-ray, stripped it of its DRM and used Media Espresso to make it playable on an iPad 2 (1024 x 768 preset).

[paulrbeers]

Originally Posted by giocav89

***UPDATE***



I am annoyed that I will have to return and reorder and resetup everything but I think and HOPE I am making the right choice. Just wanted to give everyone an update and share some information that may benefit others.

Couldn't you just clone your hard drive quick to an external drive, and then clone it over to the new 15" retina when you receive it? No setup required....

----------

Originally Posted by throAU

Oh and even on windows - quicksync is a mixed bag. Fast yes. Image quality takes a hit though.

I have to agree. I used Quicksync with an i7-3770S and was relatively disappointed by the quality. I'm no videophile where I need perfection, but the image certainly wasn't up to Par with my straight Handbrake encodes to AppleTV2 preset. I'm going back and re-encoding everything that I previously encoded.

With that said, this was all done last summer, and maybe with some tweaking I could have gotten better results and maybe with more time with the Ivy Bridge encoder, things have gotten better (software companies understanding what they can and can not do with Quicksync). Like I said though, I'm going back and redoing them in software alone (although jeez, doing a full length DVD from Mpeg2 to H.264 in less than 10 minutes was awesome, even my octocore mac pro can't do it in less than 20).

[giocav89]

Originally Posted by paulrbeers

Couldn't you just clone your hard drive quick to an external drive, and then clone it over to the new 15" retina when you receive it? No setup required....[COLOR="#808080"]

I absolutely could have, but my MacBook has a 750GB HD that is 2/3 full and my externals are currently full with other backed-up stuff. So with what I currently have in my possession, without having to spend any more money, no I can't haha. But that's just my personal preference, rather just pick and choose the absolute necessities for the Retina.