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New MacBook Air Improves H.264 Playback, Reduces Heat

redbird457 said:
I replaced my v1 Air with v2. Heat is less, video performance much better and overall performance is noticeably better. Charging time is the same and battery life may be slightly better.

Perfect for me with lots of travel and movies. Rest of time email, Microsoft Office and light Photoshop.
Click to expand...

What kind of battery life are you seeing on the new v. 2 MacBook Air?

YoungTurk
 
horvatic said:
I don't see 10 degrees difference is that significant as far as heat is concerned. You certainly wouldn't be able to tell by touch. It's great that they have added hardware acceleration for H.264 though.
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The temperature measurements are in Celsius, if it were on your lap, you'd be able to tell. :)
 
mosx said:
It's something that all modern GPUs (non-Intel) have had for many years now. It's just a matter of Apple building the support into OS X. Windows has had this kind of functionality since the 90s.
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I don't see how that can be. H.264 wasn't even around in the '90s.
 
is there any difference in video playback and temperatures between the old air and the new air?? If I play a youtube video longer than 5 min i get the fans up to 6500rpm and the temp to around 65-70...does that happen in the new version???
 
prism said:
If that is true then why dont the earlier macbook pros with the modern GPUs have this functionality? Did Apple make it exclusive to the latest models for marketing purposes? If so, shame on them!
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Install Windows on the earlier models and you shall see ;) XP or Vista, doesn't matter. Windows 98 has some of that functionality as well.

Starfall said:
I don't see how that can be. H.264 wasn't even around in the '90s.
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Hardware support for video in general. It started with HWMC, which Apple used too. Then support for both HWMC and iDCT in Windows. Then on to full bitstream decoding for any and all video codecs, which Apple still has yet to implement across all codecs and system wide like Windows.

In Windows its part of DirectX Video Acceleration, DXVA. Any video playing software playing any codec can access the GPU and have it do full bitstream decoding as long as the GPU supports it. Several years ago it was MPEG-2 only. Then it moved on to MPEG-2, WMV, and Divx/Xvid. Within the last few years its been all of that plus H.264 and VC-1.
 
prism said:
If that is true then why dont the earlier macbook pros with the modern GPUs have this functionality? Did Apple make it exclusive to the latest models for marketing purposes? If so, shame on them!
Click to expand...

The 8600M GT definitely has this functionality. Here's to hoping Apple will make things right and add support for MBPs with the Nvidia 8600M GT.

At least they f@#$ing better...
 
ghileman said:
i'm sensitive to heat and would prefer that the MBA be cooler on my lap. but it's not a big enough issue for me to make me consider something else. i leave the MBA on my lap for extended times without a problem.
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If you don't mind fan noise, you could maybe use something like smc fan control? It's available for the macbook pro at least.
 
redbird457 said:
I replaced my v1 Air with v2. Heat is less, video performance much better and overall performance is noticeably better. Charging time is the same and battery life may be slightly better.

Perfect for me with lots of travel and movies. Rest of time email, Microsoft Office and light Photoshop.
Click to expand...

Redbird,

Can you elaborate on your photoshop use on the Air (do you have the SSD)?

I posted in another thread (for NC Macguy) about editing a 39mp 16bit raw. I'd be curious to hear how the new Air handles such a large file...so if you have the time...I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on PS on the new Air.

I'm *dreaming* and salivating about ridding my life of heavy mbp's and if the Air runs as great as everyone says...and the 7200.4 500gb drives come out soon, mmmm, what a yummy combo-platter...

David

The file is here:
http://www.jirvana.com/raw_large/p45...5_CF000103.TIF

My other post:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/593227/
 
I want encoding support!

I can't wait for Snow Leopard!!
I use and H.D. camera to do personal movies, and I encode them with h264 (of x264, rather, cause with Apple's h264 I get completely unrealistic colors).
Anyway, h264 is great because I can upload high quality but light video files on my website.

BUT, it takes FOREVER to encode them. About an hour for a 10 min movie.

How fast do you reckon it will be when Snow Leopard uses the nvidia ship?
Apparently, using video cards can dramatically multiply the speed by 10.
 
worldburger said:
I'm *dreaming* and salivating about ridding my life of heavy mbp's and if the Air runs as great as everyone says...and the 7200.4 500gb drives come out soon, mmmm, what a yummy combo-platter...
Click to expand...

Don't get your hopes up on the 7200.4 500gb drives, Air's don't use 2.5" notebook drives. Instead, Air's use 1.8" iPod size hard drives or 1.8" SSD drives. Even in Rev B's SATA SSD drives use a rare form of a LIF SATA connector instead of the typical SATA connector. I was hoping Intel would make the X18 drives available for the Air..
 
moutian said:
Never buy a 1st gen mac of any model.
Click to expand...

Follow what this man says and apple products will treat you right! I was the first in line when they made the new macbook pro. It was a nightmare!! Returned it five times for a new screen and twice for keyboard and once for motherboard. They gave me a second generation finally and it was rock solid.
 
Wolf103FM said:
what app is that showing the CPU load in the menubar? I have MenuMeters on mine, and I like how that one looks over MM.
Click to expand...
Twenty5 said:
Can someone tell me what is the name of the program they use here to record the temperatures and all that?
Click to expand...
The menubar app used in the screenshots is iStat menus. They're also using another app for the window shown (MSR Tools).

iStat menus 1.4 is coming soon with some extra polish and new features :) It's free, but if you like and use it then please either donate or check out our iPhone apps.
(I'm part of iSlayer)
 
Even the x1600 in my 2nd gen MBP should be able to decode h264 with the gpu....would love to see Apple make this happen...
 
mds said:
Even the x1600 in my 2nd gen MBP should be able to decode h264 with the gpu....would love to see Apple make this happen...
Click to expand...

Exactly. I'm contemplating the acquisition of a used or refurbished MBP and I wish Apple would state clearly whether-or-not new tweaks to the OS will enable such a function in the x1600 and 8600m...
 
moutian said:
Never buy a 1st gen mac of any model.
Click to expand...

You are so right. When the first 15" powerbook came out everybody got it like crazy. Then the titanium enclousure started to peal the paint.

The previous powerbook was the Pismo G3 500 that had a 14" and every single port available, it was way superior than the Ti until the 4th Ti revision. The Pismo had 2 firewire, 2 usb, s-video output, VGA output, audio in/out, PCMCI (whatever) port. Then you could add a second batery, zip drive, combo drive and it was so easy to fix and change ram and hard drive. I believe still the best Powerbook ever made by far.

The thing is that everytime Apple jump into another new generation the last model of the previous generation becomes the best model for at lease 2 or 3 revisions. The same happened with the Powermac 9600... 6 PCI ports and dual processor!
 
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