Get the server version. I have my doubts about running a server with 2.5" hard drives, but it's better than the alternative anyway.
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Playback help on G5, MKV, FrontRow and VLC
- Thread starter ekimseekem
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Get the server version. I have my doubts about running a server with 2.5" hard drives, but it's better than the alternative anyway.
hey, i didn't read the entire thread and just skimmed a bit, couldn't help but notice you had problems playing mkv files
i've tried vlc and perian quicktime like you, and had terrible results with frequent video freezes, screwed up subtitles, and lag. a lot of shows that i watch are in mkv format, and someone developed a custom-extended version of mplayer
http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/
i've used this for a couple months now and have been nothing short of impressed. it's quick, handles subtitles amazingly well, and i prefer it to the mac version of vlc by a mile. give it a shot
hope this helps
i've tried vlc and perian quicktime like you, and had terrible results with frequent video freezes, screwed up subtitles, and lag. a lot of shows that i watch are in mkv format, and someone developed a custom-extended version of mplayer
http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/
i've used this for a couple months now and have been nothing short of impressed. it's quick, handles subtitles amazingly well, and i prefer it to the mac version of vlc by a mile. give it a shot
hope this helps
Sounds like I'm still better off going with an external dual-bay Raid drive then, connected via FW800.
To my understanding, the Mini has SATA1 to accomidate laptop hard drives, yet I've read that SATA1 and SATA2 are backwards compatitble... so in theory i should be able to connect a full 3.5" drive as long as there is space for it...
Or i can find a way to add a second hard drive. Either way... i need to give this thing more storage, with the best performance in mind.
I looked at the server version, its a cool idea... but I'm in the frame of mind that I can save a few bucks and just try and modify a regular Mac Mini, plus I've decided i don't need server, at least, not a dedicated one.
Thanks for the input, I had tried Mplayer extended, while it was a bit better, the G5 still couldn't handle the huge MKV file sizes
i have a similar problem the only difference is that mine is an intel mbp...
visited the link and dwnlded the player and the codecs...and i must say that this player plays 1080i/p very well...however, the sound is very choppy....could it be possible that the codecs i dwnlded from that link and the perian perviously installed could be clashing?
visited the link and dwnlded the player and the codecs...and i must say that this player plays 1080i/p very well...however, the sound is very choppy....could it be possible that the codecs i dwnlded from that link and the perian perviously installed could be clashing?
Unless I'm very much misunderstanding what's being installed, the MPlayer codec package has nothing at all to do with Quicktime, while Perian is a Quicktime plugin based on the same codecs. As such one cannot interfere with the other--if you're having problems, it's not because of Perian.
That said, hugely useful link, chill. That player is VERY promising--it has so far played everything I've thrown at it without complaint, and handles fast forwarding and rewinding MUCH better than VLC (which always seems to skip by huge chunks, if not just going to the beginning or end of a file). It even handles all the WMVs I've tried it with (well, other than DRM'd ones of course), and better than Flip4Mac to boot (it doesn't need to do a pre-scan to handle scrubbing).
It also handles playing files off a relatively slow network volume VERY well. Surprisingly so. I did have a couple of files with sound sync problems, but I'm pretty sure after testing that those were just funky files, and it passed Movie Night tonight with flying colors.
May have just replaced VLC as my go-to player, which is saying something.
Also, I finally figured out something that was annoying the crap out of me for the past few weeks, which I will post on separately for reference, but wanted to note here as well: I was having intermittent, maddening tearing issues under 10.6 on my home theater mini, and I couldn't figure out why. Turns out it was because the mini was booting when its only video device (the TV) was powered down and therefore unrecognized. This was triggering "headless" mode or something of the sort, and basically Quartz Extreme was failing to initialize. This, in turn, disabled coalesced video writes, which in turn caused tearing (it also, I believe, caused drastically worsened video performance when upscaling video in some apps, QT player most notably).
Glad I've finally pinned that down, though it's looking like I'm going to need to boot/restart the thing with the TV on to prevent this, since a Detect Displays isn't good enough.
(I don't think this is new with 10.6, either, just that I noticed it after the upgrade; I remember having CoverFlow fail when I'd booted headless before, for the same reason.)
That said, hugely useful link, chill. That player is VERY promising--it has so far played everything I've thrown at it without complaint, and handles fast forwarding and rewinding MUCH better than VLC (which always seems to skip by huge chunks, if not just going to the beginning or end of a file). It even handles all the WMVs I've tried it with (well, other than DRM'd ones of course), and better than Flip4Mac to boot (it doesn't need to do a pre-scan to handle scrubbing).
It also handles playing files off a relatively slow network volume VERY well. Surprisingly so. I did have a couple of files with sound sync problems, but I'm pretty sure after testing that those were just funky files, and it passed Movie Night tonight with flying colors.
May have just replaced VLC as my go-to player, which is saying something.
Also, I finally figured out something that was annoying the crap out of me for the past few weeks, which I will post on separately for reference, but wanted to note here as well: I was having intermittent, maddening tearing issues under 10.6 on my home theater mini, and I couldn't figure out why. Turns out it was because the mini was booting when its only video device (the TV) was powered down and therefore unrecognized. This was triggering "headless" mode or something of the sort, and basically Quartz Extreme was failing to initialize. This, in turn, disabled coalesced video writes, which in turn caused tearing (it also, I believe, caused drastically worsened video performance when upscaling video in some apps, QT player most notably).
Glad I've finally pinned that down, though it's looking like I'm going to need to boot/restart the thing with the TV on to prevent this, since a Detect Displays isn't good enough.
(I don't think this is new with 10.6, either, just that I noticed it after the upgrade; I remember having CoverFlow fail when I'd booted headless before, for the same reason.)
Thats a very interesting problem.... never seen that on my G5 when its hooked to the TV. How are you connecting the Mini to the TV (my future plan will be Mini DVI --> DVI --> HDMI)?
On a seperate note, I have to change my setup again, my g/f wants to put all hard drives we have into her computer and (hardware) RAID them and run Windows 7 on it, I'll set up a series of shared folders on the Win7 box, mount them on startup on the Mini and create alises for them all under the movies folder. The only issue i kinda have with this is her computer will have to be on in order to play content, but i guess its not a huge issue. The gigabit ethernet network should be able to handle playback... if its not smooth, then i'll push for another option (external HD for the Mini most likely).
Like that; Mini DVI adapter --> DVI to HDMI cable --> Onkyo Receiver --> TV. The receiver just does passthrough of video to the TV (audio is toslink) but acts as an HDMI switch. When it's off, the Mini apparently doesn't see anything as connected, which I suppose isn't surprising. (In the pref pane the mini sees the Onkyo, not the TV, as connected to the output.)
Not sure if this would be any different if the mini were hooked directly to the TV's input (and I can't easily test, due to the way my cables are routed). A computer monitor is usually just asleep, not off; I don't know whether they acknowledge their existence when they're powered down. Come to think of it, I can experiment with this when my dad's mini gets delivered, as he's got it hooked to a "monitor" that only has HDMI input. I'll post back when I've tested.
In answer to your other comment, I note that the above-linked MPlayer frontend had no trouble playing smooth, medium-bitrate DVD-resolution video off of a volume mounted over 802.11g, so I expect gigabit won't be any problem at all.
When I first set up my G5, I had to connect it directly to the TV and it recognizes it as a device. I couldn't hook it to the reciever because the audio connection (toslink/optical) was going to a different input then the HDMI (if that makes sense), i couldn't figure out how to link HDMI 4 and the toslink audio port, i had to switch between the two on the reciever. A quick solution was just to hook the mac directly to the TV and set the reciever to optical audio.
Ahh, I get it. I had a similar setup before I got a receiver with HDMI inputs, though the Onkyo both allows unmolested passthrough of the video and associating an optical audio input with an HDMI video input.
A powered off TV might even bypass the issue I'm having, though if other monitors I've tested in the past are any indication, probably not.
A powered off TV might even bypass the issue I'm having, though if other monitors I've tested in the past are any indication, probably not.
wow thankyou so much for pointing me to this! i've been trying to use my dual 2.7 g5 as a media centre and mkv's have been all but a lost cause.
i was still having skipping and sync issues at first, but i tweaked some preferences for "hard framedrop", "fast libavcodec decoding" and "multithreaded ffmpeg" and how my playback is almost perfect. there's still an occassional skip, but its very rare and this is testing a "worst case" 12gb mkv.
thanks again!