Best Video Codec for playing FullHD Movies

[Constantine1337]

Hi.

I just bought 24" FullHD Samsung SyncMaster BX2450 and I run it on my MacBook Pro i5 2,53GHz, nVidia 330M GT, 128GB SSD.

I noticed while playing FullHD movies (Avatar) that the machine starts to be pretty hot and fans run high. The fans run around 2300-3200rpm and the CPU temp is about 70°C. Furthermore, when there are a lot of small details on the screen, the video playback is not as smooth as it can be (kinda feels like the framerate drops a bit, for example when the movie shows a view of the forest).

I always thought that this machine will be able to push 1080p movie on a display with no sweat, with constant fps without getting too hot. Am I wrong with this, or is this normal?

Also, the movie I was playing is in .avi format and was played using Perian + QuickTime. I'm not a video expert, but I believe that this has also something to do with the codec used inside the .avi container. Therefore my question:
Should I convert the movie in some other format in order to have constant and smooth playback (maybe have GFX as hardware acceleration as well).

Like said, I'm not an expert, therefore I need a few tips i.e. which video codec is best for playing FullHD movies...

Regards,
Milan

 

[Hawaga]

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Try QuickTime h264..

Around 6000-7000 Kbps two pass should be convenient enough for your movies...

 

[Constantine1337]

Thanks for the fast reply.
I use Elgato's Turbo 264.HD to convert movies, and these are the options I have:


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Should I use some other converter for this or do I just change some settings?

 

[Hawaga]

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Well I guess u have to go for "bearbeiten" (adjust settings?) at the bottom and make sure u export to *.mov container with h264 codec, bit rate mentioned above, 1920x1080 resolution (or the "hd1080p" setting in the list if it exports to mov), keep original framerate and... Voilà

 

[surma884]

Try XBMC or VLC players. XBMC supports hardware acceleration. Not sure about VLC. If you have hardware acceleration then no CPU will be used.