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

Laggy 4K Video Streaming on rMBP 13"

C

CheesyTators

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 26, 2010
80
0
SE Michigan
Trying to stream various 4K video files from Youtube and other sites however every one of them lags and is really choppy under OSX. My CPU maxes out and it starts to lag. I plugged the laptop in to see if that made a difference and it still lags.

Specs: Newest 13" rMBP base i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, 256GB HDD, Maverick's with all updates complete. Am I missing a setting somewhere? Latest Flash player installed as well. Tried Safari and Chrome, same issues. No other programs running besides a web browser with a single tab open with the video. Comcast 25mb/s internet speed with no router issues. Surely a $1500 laptop can stream 4K video! No?

I can play downloaded 4K videos just fine, but I want to stream them and save the space on my HDD. Any input?

Thanks.
 
could it be your connection? also flash is no bueno, i assumed you were streaming html5 when i first read this topic
 
Normally I'd suspect your internet connection speed to cause that (born out by downloaded video playing correctly).

Oh and a workaround is to download, watch...and delete ;-)
 
How would I switch to HTML5? Youtube defaults to Flash playback on this laptop. The videos are loading just fine..in fact the loading bar fills up long before the playback ends. Thanks for the thoughts so far.
 
Considering you've already tried playing 4K videos offline successfully, without any hiccups, the problem here lies in the bad and little optimization Flash Player has in reproducing 4K videos on the fly, hence the crazy CPU utilization / lag. Your machine clearly has got enough juice to do it, I guess you'll have to wait for Flash plugin update, or try using a different browser.
 
Thanks, I figured it wasn't gonna happen. My desktop plays them just fine although that is in a class of it's own with a 4770K i7 and a GTX 660. Kind of a bummer no doubt. Really enjoy checking out the various 4K videos around the web on the retina display.
 
CheesyTators said:
How would I switch to HTML5? Youtube defaults to Flash playback on this laptop. The videos are loading just fine..in fact the loading bar fills up long before the playback ends. Thanks for the thoughts so far.
Click to expand...

Youtube defaults to HTML5 if you disable flash. I recommend that you download ClickToPlugin which allows you to click to load flash and other plugins when needed.
 
Hmm I would have that looked at if I were you, my rMBP, same configuration, plays them just fine. Actually at 8% battery right now, no lag at all.

Could you post some links here to the vids that lag on your MBP?
 
Made a quick call to Applecare and they were able to replicate the issue on their rMBP which happened to be the same spec as mine according to the rep. It appears to be an issue with the site, Youtube in this case, which is causing the issue. The rep's laptop was doing the same thing as mine, lag and stutter on the exact same video although at different points in the video. We tested the hardware and no other issues were found on my rMBP.

This is the video I was having trouble with once I changed the resolution to 4K.

http://youtu.be/Cx6eaVeYXOs
 
CheesyTators said:
This is the video I was having trouble with once I changed the resolution to 4K.

http://youtu.be/Cx6eaVeYXOs
Click to expand...
Must be your connection. I tried it on my 15" rMBP on a 100Mbps ISP, and I see no lagginess in full res. But as you can see from the network graph, it taxed my WAN connection with 1.67 MBytes/s data rate!!
 

Attachments

  • graph_image.php.png
    graph_image.php.png
    36.9 KB · Views: 363
15" rmbp come with quadcore, surely there won't be a problem.

My 13" 2.4g haswell cannot play 4k video in youtube without lag too, fully loaded while playing (in both osx and bootcamp windows 7) with 9x degree temp.

(My isp provides over 5MBytes/sec connection speed)

priitv8 said:
Must be your connection. I tried it on my 15" rMBP on a 100Mbps ISP, and I see no lagginess in full res. But as you can see from the network graph, it taxed my WAN connection with 1.67 MBytes/s data rate!!
Click to expand...
 
I returned the 13" and going to save up a bit more and grab the 15" retina since I can use the bigger screen and also processing power that comes with it. It will be worth the investment over the next 5-6 years that I own it.

Thanks for the replies everyone.
 
Apologies for the Bump! Had to be said!

Apologies for the bump :apple:


I just purchased a 2.6ghz 8gb 128gb(ssd) base model retina new couple weeks ago. Been loving it so far. After owning a mid-2009 2.8ghz MacBook Pro which couldn't play 4k video for the life of it I made sure this one could. Went into an Apple store and played all the 4k video I could find online. No hesitation. Reminiscent of the days 5 years ago before my bought my macbook when my PC couldn't stream 1080p video without choppy lag, and being amazed how perfect 1080p played on the Macbook.


What solved my problem for my Retina 13 was not a hardware issue, or connection issue. It was the flash used in the browser I was using -- Chrome. Not sure why but it skips frames and chops like hell. Open the same video into Safari after downloading the newest flash. AND BAM! :cool: Not one frame lost that I can see. Smooth as butter. Back to chrome, same chops.

Any possible fixes for Chrome? I absolutely hate having to open Safari every time I wish to watch 4k.
 
Unfortunately Chrome is rubbish on OSX

brroy said:
Apologies for the bump :apple:


I just purchased a 2.6ghz 8gb 128gb(ssd) base model retina new couple weeks ago. Been loving it so far. After owning a mid-2009 2.8ghz MacBook Pro which couldn't play 4k video for the life of it I made sure this one could. Went into an Apple store and played all the 4k video I could find online. No hesitation. Reminiscent of the days 5 years ago before my bought my macbook when my PC couldn't stream 1080p video without choppy lag, and being amazed how perfect 1080p played on the Macbook.


What solved my problem for my Retina 13 was not a hardware issue, or connection issue. It was the flash used in the browser I was using -- Chrome. Not sure why but it skips frames and chops like hell. Open the same video into Safari after downloading the newest flash. AND BAM! :cool: Not one frame lost that I can see. Smooth as butter. Back to chrome, same chops.

Any possible fixes for Chrome? I absolutely hate having to open Safari every time I wish to watch 4k.
Click to expand...

You'll have to wait until google get around to optimising chrome for OSX it is so badly coded that it hogs all your resources and never works well. At the moment the only fix is not to use chrome.....
 
Samuelsan2001 said:
You'll have to wait until google get around to optimising chrome for OSX it is so badly coded that it hogs all your resources and never works well. At the moment the only fix is not to use chrome.....
Click to expand...

I use Chrome beta because I like the layout, but it can crash now and then and its a right pain when it kicks in your discrete graphics card to view webpages. So yeah it isn't perfect yet.
 
apolloa said:
I use Chrome beta because I like the layout, but it can crash now and then and its a right pain when it kicks in your discrete graphics card to view webpages. So yeah it isn't perfect yet.
Click to expand...

Meh, never liked Chrome to begin with. Hate using it and developing for it as well. Always causes issues or slightly different as to Internet Explorer and Firefox.
 
Samuelsan2001 said:
You'll have to wait until google get around to optimising chrome for OSX it is so badly coded that it hogs all your resources and never works well. At the moment the only fix is not to use chrome.....
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. Thanks for the response. I would expect more from the No.1 browser in the world. Might be adding safari back to the sacred OSX dock.
 
This is, indeed, a pretty ****** problem.

I've been using FF for a few months and clean memory - to watch the ram usage.
While using FF the available RAM went down as hell, FF was using A LOT. Since there were many performance setbacks, i switched to chrome - to experience only worse problems.

As the author, 4k videos are impossible to view within chrome. i switched to chrome, since it comes with an inbuilt flash-technology, which allowed me to uninstall that crap - i expected to save ressources that way and increase performance.
Thought so. Chrome starts a couple of helper processes, one for every tab - which is fine, when it comes to security. BUT all processes use quite a lot of RAM, eventhough i did NOT surf on yt, fb, ressource-intense-sites with every tab.
Well, watching those processes, i came across the fact, that many are not responding, reserving RAM and CPU-time for ... nothing. Well, kind of. Those processes are the plugins, xmarks, adblock, lastpass to name em. as soon as i force quit the not-responding helpers, all those plugin crash.
there arises the question why those processes are "not-responding", eventhough they do work ...

Within Safari, I am able to watch 4k-videos without any lag, i did not reinstall flash and just juse html5-vids.

Since I do not want to use Safari, there needs to be an alternative, fine enough to go through 4k-videos without lags and is not distributed by apple.

Does anyone have any suggestions concerning another browser?

Thanks in advance,
sam


Ah, BTW. OSX Yosemite 2.4ghz i5, 8 gb ram
 
Last edited:
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