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MBA 11.6"/13.3" and full HD files does not work

M

mutsaers-vr.nl

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 10, 2008
347
4
The Netherlands
I am interested in buying a MBA 11.6" for showing my video portfolio to clients. So I went to the MAC shop with my corsair USB stick with a H.264 file (~850 MB size, 20mbs, 1920*1080, 25p, mov container). To my surprise no Apple product was able to show the video without stuttering or audio out of sync. Not the 11.6" (1.4 GHz, 2 Gb) nor the 13.3" (1.86 GHz, 2 Gb) Macbook air. Even when copying the file to the SSD it did not work. Moreover even a Mac pro could not do the job !!!!! Very strange since I have a 3 year old 24" iMac (silver), 3.06 Ghz , 4 Gb where the file runs from my corsair USB stick without any problems. So did something change in the Apple products ????????? No I don't want an iPAD(2) since it does not support Adobe Flash. Someone any ideas what the problem is :confused::confused:
 
thats very strange. bad encoding?

i run 1080p vids on my 1.6 11" without any lag using both vlc and quicktime
 
what do you mean by bad encoding. I used AVC-I-100 as source material, converted to proress 422 HQ using my imac and placed in a mov container. It works fine on my old iMac. Only thing I can think of is that during converting I used the option "hinted" because the file I uploaded to Vimeo so it can be streamed. maybe that is not a good option when you use the file stand alone ????

My iMac has 4 Gb RAM, the MBA 11.6 en 13.3 inch I tried at the shop had only 2 Gb RAM. Can this be the problem ????



Cerano said:
thats very strange. bad encoding?

i run 1080p vids on my 1.6 11" without any lag using both vlc and quicktime
Click to expand...
 
What software did you use to playback it? I've been using my 13" MBA to playback HD movies (720p, ~5Mb/s) just fine with VLC. One note I have to make is that using the MDP for audio may cause stuttering as the audio has to be decoded which is very CPU intensive. Using the headphone jack for audio keeps the video smooth though.
 
Video was played back with the version of quick time which comes with the MB air (so with snow leapard) and which I also use on my old iMac.

You have not full HD files just 720p and only 5 Mbs, I have 1080p, 20Mbs !! I know the screen is just 720 but I don't want to have tons of version of the same video.

Hellhammer said:
What software did you use to playback it? I've been using my 13" MBA to playback HD movies (720p, ~5Mb/s) just fine with VLC. One note I have to make is that using the MDP for audio may cause stuttering as the audio has to be decoded which is very CPU intensive. Using the headphone jack for audio keeps the video smooth though.
Click to expand...
 
call me a fanboy, but its probably not the macs fault.
i've done similar tasks in the past and its been flawless on my 13 inch air.
i'd guess its a problem with the video's compatibility with quicktime, or the video itself has something wrong with it. :(
 
I took some avchd files from my new panasonic af-101 to an apple store to try out. 1080 25p. The arched file played fine in iMovie. I Then converted one, I guess to aic, not proress as that is what iMovie does (I'm used to FC)
That 20 sec file played fine too. This on a base model 13 Air.
I even read a post on another forum of a guy editing xdcam ex footage on his 11 Air. So I think it was something with your files
 
artivideo.nl said:
Video was played back with the version of quick time which comes with the MB air (so with snow leapard) and which I also use on my old iMac.

You have not full HD files just 720p and only 5 Mbs, I have 1080p, 20Mbs !! I know the screen is just 720 but I don't want to have tons of version of the same video.
Click to expand...

QuickTime is awful. You should have tried VLC for example. If it didn't work in the Mac Pro, then there might have been something wrong with the actual file. Try e.g. .mkv.
 
Hellhammer, I usually think you come with very good advice here on mr, but vlc is not a great player. Specially if you use it for hd files that are from proper hd cameras as it sounds like the op has.
It's buggy, crashes AND have a very poor image quality when it play them back.
Try Movist instead, at least it does not crash all the time
 
yoak said:
Hellhammer, I usually think you come with very good advice here on mr, but vlc is not a great player. Specially if you use it for hd files that are from proper hd cameras as it sounds like the op has.
It's buggy, crashes AND have a very poor image quality when it play them back.
Try Movist instead, at least it does not crash all the time
Click to expand...

VLC has been solid for me and it was just an example. The main point was to try a different player in general, that being VLC, Movist or MPlayer for instance.
 
I see these posts and i just think...troll. You went to the Apple store and nothing could play back the file? yea ok.

C'mon man most current devices can play 1080p, why is this such a big deal on the forums. My 11" Air plays anything i throw at it get over it.

Devices now are easily capable of this task.
 
Hellhammer said:
VLC has been solid for me and it was just an example. The main point was to try a different player in general, that being VLC, Movist or MPlayer for instance.
Click to expand...

I see. Happy that VLC is solid for you. Never has been for me, but I used it to look at rushes from my camera (XDCAM HD) and every time I tried to scrubb, it crashed. At least the last 2 versions did. And the image quality was always worse than the footage actually was
 
Nothing is wrong with the file. Moreover it works fine with my old 24" imac even from USB stick !!

Onimusha370 said:
call me a fanboy, but its probably not the macs fault.
i've done similar tasks in the past and its been flawless on my 13 inch air.
i'd guess its a problem with the video's compatibility with quicktime, or the video itself has something wrong with it. :(
Click to expand...

20 sec. so you file was very small. my file was 850 Mb

yoak said:
I took some avchd files from my new panasonic af-101 to an apple store to try out. 1080 25p. The arched file played fine in iMovie. I Then converted one, I guess to aic, not proress as that is what iMovie does (I'm used to FC)
That 20 sec file played fine too. This on a base model 13 Air.
I even read a post on another forum of a guy editing xdcam ex footage on his 11 Air. So I think it was something with your files
Click to expand...

Yes I have a proper P2 HD cam. Ok I will try the Movist player next time I am in the MAC shop, good tip thanks.

yoak said:
Hellhammer, I usually think you come with very good advice here on mr, but vlc is not a great player. Specially if you use it for hd files that are from proper hd cameras as it sounds like the op has.
It's buggy, crashes AND have a very poor image quality when it play them back.
Try Movist instead, at least it does not crash all the time
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
as mentioned before the bitrate is 20 MBs. I saw that smaller files with this bitrate run better (not perfect though) than larger files. maybe 2 GB in the MBA is just not large enough.

Hellhammer said:
It doesn't matter is the file 50MB or 50GB. All what matters is the bitrate and that 50MB file can have higher bitrate if it's a very short clip while the 50GB film is hours long.
Click to expand...
 
I use my MBA 13" 2010 with my canon t2i vid recoding at 1080p 30 fps it's very high bit rate 32 - 36 Mbps and use quick time to play them it runs it without any issues on my machine, the recordings are in native .mov format did not play much with other formats.
 
My native bitrate is 100Mbs (AVC-I-100) but converted to proress 422 and compressed as h264 20 Mbs. So if you use 32-36 Mbs and not compress it further it will use less CPU power and maybe this is the reason it works with you.

ranjitb said:
I use my MBA 13" 2010 with my canon t2i vid recoding at 1080p 30 fps it's very high bit rate 32 - 36 Mbps and use quick time to play them it runs it without any issues on my machine, the recordings are in native .mov format did not play much with other formats.
Click to expand...
 
firewood said:
Just because it runs on one PC or Mac doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with the file.
Click to expand...

I agree. It could be many different problems and I trust all of the Macs at Apple store over his iMac. I would check to ensure there is nothing else installed on his iMac that runs the file, use a different file and multiple USB drives before declaring all Macs in the Apple store are incapable.
 
That was not my point !!

Just QT player 7.6.6. What I did notice in the past that QT version 10 givs problems. What is the difference between QT 7.6.6. and QT 10 ??

scottsdale said:
i agree. It could be many different problems and i trust all of the macs at apple store over his imac. I would check to ensure there is nothing else installed on his imac that runs the file, use a different file and multiple usb drives before declaring all macs in the apple store are incapable.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
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