Jumping video in OS X...?

[smilinmonki666]

Hi,

I have an iMac 24", 2.8 dual core, 2Gb Ram & 254Gb left of 297Gb of HDD. Good spec I thought. However, when importing a CD to iTunes to Apple Lossless whilst watching a video file, the video file struggles to play smoothly.

Any solutions to this, apart from doing one at a time?

 

[lostngone]

Hi,

I have an iMac 24", 2.8 dual core, 2Gb Ram & 254Gb left of 297Gb of HDD. Good spec I thought. However, when importing a CD to iTunes to Apple Lossless whilst watching a video file, the video file struggles to play smoothly.

Any solutions to this, apart from doing one at a time?

I don't know if it is possible but you could try using the "nice" command on iTunes and then use a program like VLC to watch the movie. Of course it is going to take longer to do the encode.

It could be an IO problem, try copying the movie you want to watch to a firewire drive and then play the movie while encoding the CD to the internal disk.

 

[ppc750fx]

Hi,

I have an iMac 24", 2.8 dual core, 2Gb Ram & 254Gb left of 297Gb of HDD. Good spec I thought. However, when importing a CD to iTunes to Apple Lossless whilst watching a video file, the video file struggles to play smoothly.

Any solutions to this, apart from doing one at a time?

You didn't really provide that much information... What format is the video file in? What bitrate? Resolution? Is it on the same drive that you're saving the imported files to?

Lots of factors can come into play in the scenario you described.

If it's just a low-res XviD clip then something's amiss. If, on the other hand, you're trying to play back a 5mbit/s 1080p H.264 rip from the same drive that you're importing to... well... that would make more sense.

 

[smilinmonki666]

Sorry, The movie is playing from the desktop & was a video file from a CD single & is an old .mov file. Avg 400x200 resolution & avg 2500 Bit Rate.

The CD is being encoded to Apple Lossless to an external USB drive. It also happens watching the film from the same drive the audio is being encoded too.

I understand that the system can only withstand so much I think using such low resource's for 2 simple jobs (With understanding of lossless encoding) it shouldn't struggle. It's also slowing on the scrolling through of the iTunes library in the Music tab??

Thinking to go from standard 2x1Gb Ram to 2x2Gb Ram? But think £40-ish is a bit over the top to over come this.

No Other .apps running
No large process running in the back ground

Puzzled!?!

 

[lostngone]

Sorry, The movie is playing from the desktop & was a video file from a CD single & is an old .mov file. Avg 400x200 resolution & avg 2500 Bit Rate.

The CD is being encoded to Apple Lossless to an external USB drive. It also happens watching the film from the same drive the audio is being encoded too.

I understand that the system can only withstand so much I think using such low resource's for 2 simple jobs (With understanding of lossless encoding) it shouldn't struggle. It's also slowing on the scrolling through of the iTunes library in the Music tab??

Thinking to go from standard 2x1Gb Ram to 2x2Gb Ram? But think £40-ish is a bit over the top to over come this.

No Other .apps running
No large process running in the back ground

Puzzled!?!

I would almost bet that you are bottleneck'ing at the USB level.

This isn't a CPU issue or Ram issue. Copy the Movie to the internal HD and play it and try again to encode to the external disk and see if you still have the jitter.

Your only other option is to slow down the encode so the system isn't trying to stuff so much data on to the USB bus.

 

[ppc750fx]

I would almost bet that you are bottleneck'ing at the USB level.

Bingo. USB sucks for sustained transfers, and if you've got a heavy load on the bus performance is going to suck (not to mention that CPU usage will be much higher than with, say, Firewire).

 

[Cave Man]

However, when importing a CD to iTunes to Apple Lossless whilst watching a video file, the video file struggles to play smoothly. Any solutions to this, apart from doing one at a time?

1. Quicktime (used by iTunes) is a pretty weak video playback app.
2. Apple lossless encoding is somewhat demanding on the processor.

Try launching Activity Monitor and see how cpu usage does with each running alone, and both running concurrently. You'll see where the problem lies.

 

[smilinmonki666]

Cheers guys, I'll have a look into it later today.

I'll let you know the outcome. I have a FW HDD so will have a play with that too.