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2.4ghz MBP cannot handle 1080p0 .MOV files
- Thread starter hirschab
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That's true. It is an old computer. About time for an upgrade if the purpose is 1080p video editing.
Under high load I thought MB and MBP's drew power from both mains and battery if available, with mains only I think the CPU throttles which may explain why it used to be OK and now isn't...
now this is probably the most valid reason for your mac acting up. if able, try to find a replacement.
It's crazy that a 5 years old device that weight around 2,5kg has cooling fans and has to be carried in a backpack is shrinked down to a device that fits your pocket han has more horsepowers. I wonder where we will be in 5 years from now.
we are wandering around with i7 processor power in a smartphone. CRAZY!!
Good thinking. OP, simonsi could be onto something here. It could have something to do with the battery.
I suppose one thing that you could do to investigate would be to run Geekbench to see if your CPU score compares to normal machines or compares to those running without a battery.
As a stopgap, you might get better VLC performance by tweaking the settings.
I honestly would not have considered that, but it very well could be. I will do a Geekbench and post the results of that.
I realize it's an old laptop, but heck, I spent 3200$ on it when I first purchased it and I would really rather get every bit of life out of it that I can rather than buy a new one. I'm getting more serious about video editing anyhow so I won't be purchasing another laptop.
Alright, I ran a geekbench and came up with these results http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/365449 So it seems like there definitely is something up with the machine, but I don't know how to interpret these results into knowing what that might be.
The problem is that MacBooks and MacBook Pros run at reduced speed when they have no battery.
2GB of RAM is really insufficient too, but the problem is that all computers with the Nvidia 8600M are very prone to GPU failure so I can't recommend spending any money on this particular model.
Edit: Apple seems to have removed the relevant tech document but a copy is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130615084258/http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2332
I also have an early 2008 2.4 GHz MBP. Although I upgraded to a late 2012 Mac mini last year, I decided to hang onto my MBP as a backup, and I'm glad I did. If you do a web search, you can find third-party replacement batteries for about $35, which is a reasonable investment if a bad battery is indeed your problem. I'm on my second battery, and it lasts for about 2 hours on a charge, so I plan to get a new one.
The NVidia GPU problem, if I recall correctly, caused video distortion and/or motherboard frying, but not the problem you describe. My motherboard blew out two weeks before my Apple Care ran out, so I was able to get it replaced at a reasonable price.
If you want to extend the life of your MBP as long as possible, almost everyone who has replaced the HDD with an SSD recommends it. 256 GB SSDs are cheap now. I assume you have 4 GB of RAM rather than 2, but if you don't, 4 will help. If you do indeed have the early 2008 model, OWC says it will work with 6 GB of RAM, even though it officially only supports 4.
A new battery, 6 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD will cost about US$300-350. That's much cheaper than a new MBP or MBA. But you can get a refurbished base-model i5 Mac mini for $500, or the mid-range i7 model for $680 when they're in stock (they aren't at the moment), which is a better investment if you don't need a laptop computer and you have a monitor, mouse, and keyboard.
The NVidia GPU problem, if I recall correctly, caused video distortion and/or motherboard frying, but not the problem you describe. My motherboard blew out two weeks before my Apple Care ran out, so I was able to get it replaced at a reasonable price.
If you want to extend the life of your MBP as long as possible, almost everyone who has replaced the HDD with an SSD recommends it. 256 GB SSDs are cheap now. I assume you have 4 GB of RAM rather than 2, but if you don't, 4 will help. If you do indeed have the early 2008 model, OWC says it will work with 6 GB of RAM, even though it officially only supports 4.
A new battery, 6 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD will cost about US$300-350. That's much cheaper than a new MBP or MBA. But you can get a refurbished base-model i5 Mac mini for $500, or the mid-range i7 model for $680 when they're in stock (they aren't at the moment), which is a better investment if you don't need a laptop computer and you have a monitor, mouse, and keyboard.
Those results look consistent with power supply throttling to me. The link that I posted earlier was actually to a GB2 run. I picked that one because it specifically mentioned no battery in the notes. Then, 5 days later, the same person posted normal results. I'll include screen shots below, but here are the links: Test 1 (no battery). Test 2. FWIW, the normal 32-bit GB3 score for yours should be about 1105 single and 1831 multi core.
So, yeah, I think there is a very good chance that a new battery would more than double your CPU horsepower. Maybe try that and see how it goes? Then maybe consider some additional upgrades. If it has otherwise been meeting your needs to this point, the CPU upgrade (battery) combined with an SSD and additional memory as others have suggested would make it feel like a new machine for most things.
You hint that you want to get a desktop for video editing? Did I get that right? But you still want to keep this one going for as long as possible for other things? IMHO, it's a good strategy. It feels a bit silly to boot up a Mac Pro tower just for a little web surfing, Netflix, or fiddling with iTunes. Your power bill will agree.
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Silly question, make sure you're using the right decoder.
1080p AVCHD files will not play at ALL using some software on my Lenovo T520.. just skull****s the CPU completely.
Some use the ******, terrible, old, obsolete NVS4200M GPU and they play with 3% CPU load without a skip, even being 20-50 mbps.
It depeneds a lot on the software's utilization of your hardware, and the software's configuration. In my case i was comparing using VLC to open something on windows to using AVIDemux2 with vdpau on Gentoo Linux on my machine.. night and day difference.
But yeah, anything C2D opposed to i5/i7 is kinda slow/old by modern standards. I remember when they were the **** coming out, but they're dated now.
1080p AVCHD files will not play at ALL using some software on my Lenovo T520.. just skull****s the CPU completely.
Some use the ******, terrible, old, obsolete NVS4200M GPU and they play with 3% CPU load without a skip, even being 20-50 mbps.
It depeneds a lot on the software's utilization of your hardware, and the software's configuration. In my case i was comparing using VLC to open something on windows to using AVIDemux2 with vdpau on Gentoo Linux on my machine.. night and day difference.
But yeah, anything C2D opposed to i5/i7 is kinda slow/old by modern standards. I remember when they were the **** coming out, but they're dated now.
Since I've had it since 2007 and the GPU hasn't failed is it safe to say I'm in the clear with this issue though?
Hey Swampus, thanks so much. Yeah my next comp will be a desktop, absolutely, and likely it will be a PC, I am very interested in learning the ins and outs of Premiere and can't see any advantage to paying more to do so on a mac. I love my mac pro, though, and I'll keep it around. It's unfortunate what happened to it (I had it in storage for 6 months while I was in Peru, and when I returned the battery had expanded to like 5x the size, which somehow killed the backlight of the LCD screen, so I've been using it with an external monitor since Apple quoted me 500$ for a replacement LCD. This was really the turning point of switching me over to PC, 500$ for a laptop screen is obscene IMHO and turned me off this arrogant price gouging attitude of Apple for good)
Anywhoo... I still love my MBP and I want to keep it around for as long as she'll go, so I'll definitely buy a battery and possibly a bit of ram, and who knows maybe down the road I'll put an SSD into her and see how she likes it. For right now my $$ is going to go into purchasing a powerhouse PC for video editing. I just wish I could look at my videos right now.
Thanks everyone for all the input, the community on this site which has always been amazing and incredibly helpful. I'll post a follow up when I get a battery and let you all know how it goes and if it fixed the issue.
Have you looked on ebay for a second hand screen?
A 13" one is $99 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Black-Glo...Laptop_Screens_LCD_Panels&hash=item4acd80d35f
A 15" one is $127 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Apple-Mac...Laptop_Screens_LCD_Panels&hash=item1c31b254bf
And a 17" is $170 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Apple-17-...Laptop_Screens_LCD_Panels&hash=item43c4c7dedb
Barney
A 13" one is $99 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Black-Glo...Laptop_Screens_LCD_Panels&hash=item4acd80d35f
A 15" one is $127 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Apple-Mac...Laptop_Screens_LCD_Panels&hash=item1c31b254bf
And a 17" is $170 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Apple-17-...Laptop_Screens_LCD_Panels&hash=item43c4c7dedb
Barney
2.4ghz MBP cannot handle 1080p0 .MOV files
My 2009 13" MacBook Pro play 10 GB .MP4 (Spirit Away in 1080p for those that are curious). The files you mentioned shouldn't be a problem for your computer. The only problems I've occurred are .MKV over 11 GB, H.265, and 4K videos.
My 2009 13" MacBook Pro play 10 GB .MP4 (Spirit Away in 1080p for those that are curious). The files you mentioned shouldn't be a problem for your computer. The only problems I've occurred are .MKV over 11 GB, H.265, and 4K videos.
Your problem IS the battery. Your machine will run at half speed if it detects no battery. It does this because when running on only direct power at full speed, the MBP can sometimes draw more power than only direct can provide. To ensure this does not happen, the MBP runs at half speed.
Go to 'About this Mac', and see what it says about your battery. If it says 'needs service' then you are running at half speed. Get a new battery, or a newer MBP. Either will enable you to do what you are looking to do.
I found this out the hard way as I had an old Core Duo machine running minecraft for my son. The performance was garbage, yet I heard others saying thy could use the same model to run minecraft very well. I did some digging and found out about the battery thing. I replaced the battery, and that old machine is obviously 'twice' as powerful now.
No, if anything it's more likely to fail as it's getting old. You're definitely passed the early dud time frame, but it's a bathtub failure rate so now your failure odds are going up.
You people do realize that just like ".avi" and ".mkv", ".mov" is just a container? You can put all kinds of audio and video into it, some are better compressed, some not so much. The stuff that comes straight off a video camera tends not to be very compressed because the hardware on a digital camera has to run cool (no space for a fan there) and conserve the battery.
Maverics is basically one of those under-the-bonnet updates that could be the reason. As someone who owns basically lower end version of your machine (200MHz slower CPU and half the VRAM), I know it does tend to run hot when playing high quality, but still compressed, blu-ray rips. Thus I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that it gets even worse with footage straight off a DSLR.
What size and length raw videos you're working with? Because if you've got a lot of other things in memory those 2GB of RAM might run out and after that OSX is forced to move stuff that should be in RAM onto the HDD (called Paging and done by all modern operating systems) which naturally leads to a serious performance degradion.
I don't know, but I probably wouldn't let the bathtub curve scare me off just yet. I'm not aware of any example of it being calibrated against a specific time index for any modern computer (post vacuum tube era). Technological obsolescence (eye of the beholder, my friend) is usually reached before the end of life cycle, which makes the necessary data collection nearly impossible.
If you're still using the OEM mechanical drive, I'd guess that the odds are probably against you there heading into the future. The rest is just a crap shoot.
Does it make sense to spend money on it? All I can say is that if it were my machine and I liked it and I wanted to keep it going, I would do exactly that. A lot can depend on how you look at it. I don't consider drives to be an investment in any particular computer. Whether high capacity storage or high speed boot drives, I'm going to need those things no matter how they are divided between my computers or external cases. A nice SSD could eventually find a home in your new PC if things don't work out with your MBP.
If it were mine, I'd probably redo the thermal compound too.
FWIW, I'm typing this from a Macintosh that I purchased new in 1999 and I have never had any problems with it (G4 Sawtooth, IMHO, one of the finest computers ever made).
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For now, you might try the VLC settings that I mentioned earlier. There will be a bit of a tradeoff for image quality in exchange for faster frame rates, but you might find it an acceptable compromise in the short term.
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