No 1080p Playback on Stock uMBP-17 ???

[iCheddar]

How are you guys having problems with 1080p playback? I can play back 1080p content ripped from a bluray disc on my 13" MBP with relative ease.

Mind you it heats the hell up...but otherwise.

 

[iHateMacs]

All these comments are very odd.

The reason I (partially) moved to Mac was because of how well the Mac played 1080p video. I have a Canon EOS 5D MK II camera and it records in 1080p 30fps. A lot of people on the photography forums praised the Mac for its ability to smoothly play this whereas similar spec Win based machines could not.

My early 2008 MBP plays the 1080p like silk even on my external 26" monitor, even coming off the system drive.

 

[goMac]

This DOES sound like a hard drive problem, especially if you are dealing with less compressed video. I know at work I can't play less compressed 1080p off a single 7200 rpm drive, I have to play off our NAS and even then...

If the compression is less than what a typical 1080p consumer clip has, than a 5300 rpm drive may not cut it. If you playback a 1080p clip of Apple's movie trailers site, I wouldn't expect you to have issues though... Try that. Those are pretty compressed.

 

[MasterDev]

I just bought my new 17" uMBP, and figured it would have no problem playing 1080p movies. I was using the 9400 chip, and it was choppy at times. Then I switched to the 9600GT chip, and it was the same thing. I even restarted the machine.

I was trying to figure it out. Maybe it was the file itself, even though the type of artifacts, I have never seen with MKV, other than occasionally on my old underpowered CD 1st gen black macbook struggling to play high quality 720p.

So, I decided to watch my istats while I was watching the movie, and every time an error occurred, my HDD read peaked, and I guess totally maxed out. I have the standard 500GB, 5400rpm drive.

Can I really not watch 1080p movies because of my HDD?

I used to play 1080p MKV movies on my old MacBook (White) with no problem. Although it doesn't play them anymore since it was ran over >_>

 

[Gatteau]

All these comments are very odd.

The reason I (partially) moved to Mac was because of how well the Mac played 1080p video. I have a Canon EOS 5D MK II camera and it records in 1080p 30fps. A lot of people on the photography forums praised the Mac for its ability to smoothly play this whereas similar spec Win based machines could not.

My early 2008 MBP plays the 1080p like silk even on my external 26" monitor, even coming off the system drive.

Are your 1080p vidoes in an .mkv format?

 

[spike8585]

This DOES sound like a hard drive problem, especially if you are dealing with less compressed video. I know at work I can't play less compressed 1080p off a single 7200 rpm drive, I have to play off our NAS and even then...

If the compression is less than what a typical 1080p consumer clip has, than a 5300 rpm drive may not cut it. If you playback a 1080p clip of Apple's movie trailers site, I wouldn't expect you to have issues though... Try that. Those are pretty compressed.

Yea, I can play the apple trailers pretty well. All of my 1080p vids are MKV, between 8-12GB.

I downloaded the MPlayer extended, and set it to cache 256MB, and use theaded processing. Now it is like butter.

I am now wondering if it might have to do with firmware EFI 1.7. I have been reading the thread on that, but I am not done yet.
A lot of the beachball talk sounds familiar.
But this is the stock apple 5400rpm drive. I dont know. Maybe it was just VLC.

 

[spike8585]

Ok, now I am having a hard time even playing 720p shows. Something more sever must be happening. Beach-ball too often.
My computer is only 2 weeks old. It used to be extremely snappy.

 

[dr. shdw]

Ok, now I am having a hard time even playing 720p shows. Something more sever must be happening. Beach-ball too often.
My computer is only 2 weeks old. It used to be extremely snappy.

overheating = downclocking = slow

 

[spike8585]

overheating = downclocking = slow

I have istats up, and my temp is pretty constant, between 50-60 degrees Celsius. I am guessing that is normal operating temp.

I am now thinking it might be transmission. I didnt seem to be having any problems until I upgraded to Snow Leopard, and then upgraded transmission to 1.75.

I will try shutting down transmission next time i watch something.
Is it possible, that when I am downloading stuff, at around 700KBps, when I am decompressing rar files, that it is fragmenting the file, making it difficult to play back smoothly? Or does transmission allocate the full file size to a certain place on the HDD. Or perhaps rarX allocated the space for its decompression writes?

 

[taeclee99]

Just use plex. Plays 1080P mkv's no prob. All other apps don't play these files as well.

 

[dr. shdw]

I have istats up, and my temp is pretty constant, between 50-60 degrees Celsius. I am guessing that is normal operating temp.

I am now thinking it might be transmission. I didnt seem to be having any problems until I upgraded to Snow Leopard, and then upgraded transmission to 1.75.

I will try shutting down transmission next time i watch something.
Is it possible, that when I am downloading stuff, at around 700KBps, when I am decompressing rar files, that it is fragmenting the file, making it difficult to play back smoothly? Or does transmission allocate the full file size to a certain place on the HDD. Or perhaps rarX allocated the space for its decompression writes?

Transmission sucks. uTorrent is a lot better.

 

[spike8585]

Transmission sucks. uTorrent is a lot better.

Cool, I'll try that too.
Thanks.

 

[Mr Dobey]

ya .mkv in Quicktime X and iTunes would be nice

While we're on the subject,

I encoded a 1080p .mkv to H.264 at 6000kbps and it will play fine in iTunes but not Quicktime X. What gives? I thought iTunes was based of a quicktime engine?

 

[goMac]

While we're on the subject,

I encoded a 1080p .mkv to H.264 at 6000kbps and it will play fine in iTunes but not Quicktime X. What gives? I thought iTunes was based of a quicktime engine?

iTunes is a QuickTime 7 based application (still, even under Snow Leopard), and QuickTime Player X is based on the QuickTime X rendering path, so no, they're not the same thing.

I've heard rumors that something along these lines is supposed to be fixed by 10.5.2.

 

[TH3D4RKKN1GH7]

My 15" 2.8GHZ 4GB RAM plays 1080p back fine on VLC with the exception of the chase sequence in TDK that was shot in IMAX lol. So I use PLEX and it plays back PERFECTLY! So yeah I use PLEX and I used to be a VLC guy.

 

[Maserati7200]

VLC in my opinion sucks. I don't know why people use it.

VLC has a horrible user experience and interface, (i agree, it sucks) but it is one of the most useful applications I have. It plays any audio or video format known to mankind. It also can play broken/corrupted video files, a huge plus.

I used to play 1080p MKV movies on my old MacBook (White) with no problem. Although it doesn't play them anymore since it was ran over >_>

LOL, that sucks bro

 

[machspeed5]

i have been experiencing stuttering/skipping in the most recent builds of VLC 1.0+ while using transmission......try finding VLC .86....it solved my stuttering and now I keep both versions of VLC handy.