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mkv bluray file on 13" mbp (low end) - stutters and uses 130% cpu?

T

thesmoth

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 7, 2008
367
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When I try and play these files, even at only half screen size, they stutter all the time and lag up and show artifacts, and my cpu usage shows beside 'launched' programs between 90-130%.

Should this brand new computer be able to play these damn files? Quick time 7 stutter it before i upgraded to snow leopard, now quicktime x won't play them, and VLC also stutters. I have perian installed, which i used with quicktime 7 but it doesn't solve this problem.
 
Have you tried MPlayer OS X Extended and enabled multithreaded ffmpeg and fast libavcodec on it?

Snow Leopard seems to break video playback.
 
I find no difference in Snow Leopard, seems to be about the same as Leopard. It's the second time I've read that people are having trouble with HD media so I'm really interested in seeing what is causing it.
 
iLog.Genius said:
I find no difference in Snow Leopard, seems to be about the same as Leopard. It's the second time I've read that people are having trouble with HD media so I'm really interested in seeing what is causing it.
Click to expand...
VLC seems to be choking on MKVs on my Macbook but not on my iMac Core Duo.

Snow Leopard feels like a dice roll when it comes to diagnosing problems.
 
Using mplayer and those settings you suggested it runs great! Cpu usage is still between 130-150% for that task, and my temps jumped up to 79-80 degrees in a hurry, but it ran well!
 
thesmoth said:
Using mplayer and those settings you suggested it runs great! Cpu usage is still between 130-150% for that task, and my temps jumped up to 79-80 degrees in a hurry, but it ran well!
Click to expand...

Plex works great in Leopard. Not sure if it's updated yet.
 
I always install Perian for QuickTime 7. Then, I just export the MKV to MP4. I passthough the H.264 video track, but have to reencode the AC3 audio to AAC. That's not a big deal since I don't have a 5.1 sound system.

Works great on both my Mac and on my PS3, and on my 13" MBP, the resulting files use the GPU to accellerate playback in QuickTime X.

I typically only use about 10-20% of CPU usage with a 720p video file.
 
screensaver400 said:
I always install Perian for QuickTime 7. Then, I just export the MKV to MP4. I passthough the H.264 video track, but have to reencode the AC3 audio to AAC. That's not a big deal since I don't have a 5.1 sound system.

Works great on both my Mac and on my PS3, and on my 13" MBP, the resulting files use the GPU to accellerate playback in QuickTime X.

I typically only use about 10-20% of CPU usage with a 720p video file.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea, though certainly a lot of work.

I suggest trying several players. Quicktime X, if it is able to use the GPU for decoding, will be fastest but with MKVs it doesn't work so you have to do the above or try other players. Movist might work.
 
kasakka said:
That's a good idea, though certainly a lot of work.

I suggest trying several players. Quicktime X, if it is able to use the GPU for decoding, will be fastest but with MKVs it doesn't work so you have to do the above or try other players. Movist might work.
Click to expand...

Not as much as it might seem.

Because only the audio is being re-encoded, it takes only minutes to convert. You only do it once and you have no video quality loss.

So the process is as follows:
1) Open MKV in QuickTime 7
2) File>Export
3) Save

The first time you do it, you need to change a setting. You ensure that the Export Settings (what pops up when you click File>Export) is on "Movie to MPEG-4". You click Options, and under the Video tab select Passthrough. Under the Audio tab, I use 160kbps AAC.

Once you apply those settings once, you don't need to again (unless you ever change something). Just make sure the "Most Recent Settings" option is selected in the drop down.

I just played a 1080p H.264 MP4 of Planet Earth. It's encoded at over 10mbps, and in the scene with the flying birds (which, because H.264 is VBR, spikes the bitrate to probably 25mbps) it uses only 12% of my CPU. It's all handled by the GPU.

I believe, if you open MKVs in Quicktime directly, it falls back to the old QTKit system, not the new, GPU-accelerated QTX. None of the other Mac video players use GPU acceleration, to my knowledge. By relying on the CPU, you get a hotter machine using more power, and also slowing down the rest of your machine.
 
I can't recommend Plex over a simple player like MPlayer OS X Extended. It's a good program but Plex is just overwhelming.
 
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