I'm really hoping somebody could help me with this. I have some h.264 MKV 1080P movies that I'm trying to play with my latest gen MBP. The computer chokes with these type of movies using VLC player. The audio plays but the video skips like crazy. Upon somebody else's suggestion I tried using Mplayer. With Mplayer the video plays fine but the audio skips every few seconds. I even tried installing a beta version of Perian with Quicktime but that puts out a screeching sound every few seconds. Any ideas or hope of playing these freakin MKV files on my computer???
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MBP 2.4Ghz: Still Not Enough Juice for H.264 MKV Playback?
- Thread starter Habusho
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I think it might just be the MKV file. I have a 1080P MKV copy of a movie that plays like butter on my MacBook (ok, it stutters about every 10 minutes) in VLC and various 720P files that also play like champs.
If you have Windows, that's what I'd recommend, as the drivers for Windows feature hardware acceleration of H.264 content using the GPU alone.
My Pentium4 HT 3.4 GHz with the ATi Radeon X1950 Pro can play 1080P video with no skipping at all, displaying to my Sony GDM-FW900 24" 1920x1200 CRT display, using Windows XP Professional.
I'd test on my Mac, but all I have is G4s.
And that'd be painful for both me and the G4.
Too bad theres no CCCP for the Mac (Combined Community Codec Pack - www.cccp-project.net )
Try this - http://perian.org/#detail
Hope it helps.
EDIT - Also try VLC.
Thats kinda bad though that its doing this to you, since my processor is about 2-3 times slower at tasks compared to the processor in your MBP. :3
My Pentium4 HT 3.4 GHz with the ATi Radeon X1950 Pro can play 1080P video with no skipping at all, displaying to my Sony GDM-FW900 24" 1920x1200 CRT display, using Windows XP Professional.
I'd test on my Mac, but all I have is G4s.
And that'd be painful for both me and the G4.
Too bad theres no CCCP for the Mac (Combined Community Codec Pack - www.cccp-project.net )
Try this - http://perian.org/#detail
Hope it helps.
EDIT - Also try VLC.
Thats kinda bad though that its doing this to you, since my processor is about 2-3 times slower at tasks compared to the processor in your MBP. :3
Wow, I've been at wits end for the last few days. I have a MBP not a MB computer with a dedicated graphics card and you're still able to play 1080P movies without stutter? The files I'm trying to play also have ac3 5.1 sound with 448kbit/s in them so maybe that makes a difference. I'm not sure. Btw. Tried Perian, it makes a harsh sound every 10 seconds or so with the file.
Perian doesn't quite play nice with MKV as it stands right now. It will play MKVs, it just doesn't seem to handle the high bitrates very well.
I just watched a 1080P trailer from Apple's website (10.3 Mb/s) and it played not nearly as well as others have. So, I take back what I have said about mine playing them without stutter. Not all of them are great apparently. My friend just played it on his first gen 15" MBP (2.0GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM, x1600 128MB) and it looks f***ing gorgeous. Mine was 1080P PowerPoint edition.
Just out of curiosity, do you have the 17" or 15" MBP? If it is the 15", why bother with 1080P at all? It is larger than your screen, and 1080P shrunk will look just about the same as 720P enlarged.
I downloaded a movie trailer at 1080p from iTunes, and it stutters a lot on my MBP. Very annoying!!
Use VLC Player.
The 2.4GHz MBP has plenty juice to pump out 1080P. I've run a trial with 1080P H.264 MP4 movies (not MKV's) and runs very smoothly.
My HD collection is mostly made up of 720P MKV files, which playback fine on my MBP and when my 37" TV is connected.
I'm not a big fan of MKV files, I find them a messy codec. H.264 with MP4 compression is definitely the way forward for HD content. Smaller video size, better quality and smoother since it's easier to decode.
As for Windows being better at H.264, I've never had any problems with H.264 playing back on my Mac, always been 100% performance.
The 2.4GHz MBP has plenty juice to pump out 1080P. I've run a trial with 1080P H.264 MP4 movies (not MKV's) and runs very smoothly.
My HD collection is mostly made up of 720P MKV files, which playback fine on my MBP and when my 37" TV is connected.
I'm not a big fan of MKV files, I find them a messy codec. H.264 with MP4 compression is definitely the way forward for HD content. Smaller video size, better quality and smoother since it's easier to decode.
As for Windows being better at H.264, I've never had any problems with H.264 playing back on my Mac, always been 100% performance.
I found that by using the perian plugin for quicktime and making sure that the movie file in question is fully loaded in quicktime (watch the grey bar fill up at the bottom) solves the funny noise every few seconds glitch
worked for me when i was watching Heroes season 2 from NBC
I play 1080P MKV files all the time. Works nice on a MBP 2.4 ghz. No problems ... smooth as butter.
I found that by using the perian plugin for quicktime and making sure that the movie file in question is fully loaded in quicktime (watch the grey bar fill up at the bottom) solves the funny noise every few seconds glitch
worked for me when i was watching Heroes season 2 from NBC
That actually works. Thanks for the tip. Still some stuttering though. Btw. I have the 15" MBP, I'm watching the files on my 23" ACD and my big screen TV at home. I think QT\Perian is faster than VLC though.
Mkv & Hd
I have a Macbook but when I was considering replacing my desktop with a Mac, I looked into the video playing software like VLC and Media Player. They both have their issues. VLC has one with soft-subs with MKV files. But the overriding theme was that the codecs weren't mature enough to run 1080p files (and sometimes even lower res.) without frames being dropped. Now some people were successful but others weren't. Some posted it even happenned on 2.8 core 2 duo iMacs. This was unacceptable to me since you can get an older PC and run something like Zoom Player along with ffdshow on it and get great playback. It sure put a dent in my view that you can do everything on a Mac that you can on a PC (except games). I like watching anime videos which these days are high definition MKV files. It may work better with other container formats but there were too many problems posted for me to buy a Mac to replace my main computer. Though, I love my Mac laptop and will line up when they issue a newer Macbook Pro model.
I have a Macbook but when I was considering replacing my desktop with a Mac, I looked into the video playing software like VLC and Media Player. They both have their issues. VLC has one with soft-subs with MKV files. But the overriding theme was that the codecs weren't mature enough to run 1080p files (and sometimes even lower res.) without frames being dropped. Now some people were successful but others weren't. Some posted it even happenned on 2.8 core 2 duo iMacs. This was unacceptable to me since you can get an older PC and run something like Zoom Player along with ffdshow on it and get great playback. It sure put a dent in my view that you can do everything on a Mac that you can on a PC (except games). I like watching anime videos which these days are high definition MKV files. It may work better with other container formats but there were too many problems posted for me to buy a Mac to replace my main computer. Though, I love my Mac laptop and will line up when they issue a newer Macbook Pro model.
I compiled mplayer on my machine. Since when you compile it, it's optimized for your specific system, it runs a lot faster. Now I can even play 1080p mkv files smoothly on my 1.5GHz PowerBook.
With regards to your stutter, your not getting audio stutter are you? If so then you can change the audio decoder in the menu, try toggling that.
I play 1080p MKV's all the time with my macbook 2.2ghz 4gb ram, most if not all are perfect but you may come across the odd one that has been encoded not using standard parameters and these will have playback problems.
I have the exact same MBP as you (2.2, 4GB), and I'm getting LOTS of stutter (video) on 1080p trailers from iTunes. The video isn't smooth at all. Internal 7200rpm HD.
Any ideas?
Try using the beta version of Perian. I also tried Mplayer but was still getting stutter. I never tried compiling from source though which might have helped my system speed a lot.
Thanks, I'll give it a go. Will that speed files played directly in iTunes up as well, or do they have to be opened in Quicktime?
With my Macbook Pro(2,2) 2.33GHz, 2GB Ram, ATi X1600 w/ 256mb, outputting to a Dell 2407 (at 1920x1200) both 1080P MKV and Mp4 h.264 files seem to play flawlessly.
I'm using Perian 1.1beta and Niceplayer.
I'm using Perian 1.1beta and Niceplayer.