Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Lag during 720p playback

N

npriess

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 12, 2008
101
0
Denmark
Hi,

When I play back a video from my freeagent go portable drive, I experience a slight lag every 5-10 seconds.

Is there something to do about it? :confused:
 
Copy it to an internal drive. Your external is not fast enough to accommodate the bitrate of high-resolution video.

You could also try playing with Plex. I've found that it has fewer problems with lag on high-bitrate videos than other players.
 
I just don't get it - because transfer rates exceed 30 mb/sec from my external drive.
Shouldn't that be enough for a smooth video playback?
 
Okay - thanks for the advice :) I'll try Plex.

What are the specs of your setup? computer, drive and interface
 
So the conclusion is;

1. VLC sucks at playing HD video from an external drive?
2. No matter how fast a drive I would connect - I would still have the same issue?
 
Cave Man said:
It has nothing to do with the external drive. It has everything to do with the playback software. My Blu-ray drive is USB, which is substantially slower than any USB hard drive.
Click to expand...

I don't know about that. I also have a FreeAgent Go drive, as well as a 3.5" USB external, and both have lag problems with QuickTime and VLC. Both players work fine from with video copied to my internal drive.

That being the case, I imagine eSATA would work just fine.

npriess said:
2. No matter how fast a drive I would connect - I would still have the same issue?
Click to expand...

The speed of the drive has nothing to do with it. External hard drives are the same drives that are used in computers, just placed in an external enclosure. The bottleneck is the USB interface.
 
I know the drives are similar to those in the computer - but what I meant was another interface. Choosing a firewire 800 drive for instance? :)
 
npriess said:
So the conclusion is;

1. VLC sucks at playing HD video from an external drive?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. There are too many variables to know where the difficulty lies, such as bit rate, video codec, audio codec and frame rate. But generally speaking, only Plex and XBMC are efficient play back apps for HD video.

2. No matter how fast a drive I would connect - I would still have the same issue?
Click to expand...

I can play Blu-ray rips off of a USB2 hard drive with Plex. These are typically 1080p, 30 mbps bit rate, 24 fps and have digital audio (AC3, DTS), and I'm using a 2 gHz Mac Mini/gma950.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back