HD 1080p in MacBook Air ?

[Mal]

if you go to the settings>>displays you can vary the resolution of your MBA.

And what would be the point of this? Yes, you could drop the resolution. You can't go higher than the monitor is made for, which is 1280x800. You can't (or shouldn't) go to a different aspect ratio, nor would it help anything in any way. CrimsonTide's point was that the MBA's monitor is perfect for playing 720p video, but not made for 1080p (thus it won't play at it's best no matter what you do).

jW

 

[retro83]

That's bizarre. Original MacBook 2.0 GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 5400 RPM HDD, GMA 950 graphics chipset of course, Numbers, iTunes, Mail, Safari, and of course QT Player, all open. Spaces turned on, four panes, two with windows in them. 10,000 BC 1080p x.264 trailer, smooth as glass, start to finish. Fan kicked on medium speed right at the end, then went straight down to low speed. (And, yeah, I'm absolutely sure which HD versions of the trailers I played; and I played both of the 10K BC trailers available in 1080p). Replayed one of them, switched to Mail, back, moved some windows, no hitches. I mean, I'm not kidding. But I was told when I bought then thing it would be superb for playing 1080p video, but if I was going to do a lot of 1080p video editing, it wouldn't be ideal.

So I don't get it. Especially the MBP C2D owner who reports some stutters, but of course, not testing with this particular trailer, I suppose.

Added: No, of course it won't play full-frame at 1080p on a MacBook display, so for the sake of argument, I played them on an external display, 1440x900, too. Same deal. Smooth as glass. And we have a BD player, so I know from smooth.

What?! Damn, I have an almost brand new 2.2GHz C2D Macbook with 2 Gigs of RAM in the correct config, and the 1080P trailer linked above is terrible (even on the Pixar bit with almost no movement).

 

[Consultant]

What?! Damn, I have an almost brand new 2.2GHz C2D Macbook with 2 Gigs of RAM in the correct config, and the 1080P trailer linked above is terrible (even on the Pixar bit with almost no movement).

I wonder if "Better Performance" mode, connected to power supply, with battery in would do better?

Most people would have to wait until the whole file is finished downloading before playing.

 

[bjdraw]

Not sure what the deal is with that 1080p transformers clip, but it doesn't play correctly on anything I have. It breaks up and is down right unwatchable. If I pause it, the video clears up for a few seconds, but then it goes down hill again.

I just downloaded 10,000 BC 1080p clip, and most of the time it plays ok, the highest I've seen the CPU is ~65%, but the frame rate isn't constantly 24p so something else is causing issues. I tested this on my 1.6/80HDD MBA. It's been a week since I played it on the 1.8/SSD, but I'd say it played better on the HDD then the SDD, but without testing it side by side, it's hard to say for sure.

I'm configuring my EyeTV right now, I'll report back once I had a chance to try it out.

 

[bjdraw]

And what would be the point of this? Yes, you could drop the resolution. You can't go higher than the monitor is made for, which is 1280x800. You can't (or shouldn't) go to a different aspect ratio, nor would it help anything in any way. CrimsonTide's point was that the MBA's monitor is perfect for playing 720p video, but not made for 1080p (thus it won't play at it's best no matter what you do).

jW

You don't know what you are talking about.

Resolution isn't the only factor and if you take a 1080p clip and transcode it to 720p to perfectly fit the MBA like you say, there is more of a chance that you will pick up artifacts in the transcoding process, then in the 1080p to 720p conversion the MBA will do on the fly. Not to mention who wants to spend the time to transcode just to watch a movie on the plane?

 

[bjdraw]

Just configured EyeTV 2.5.2 to stream from my HDHomeRun over 802.11G and it works perfectly. It actually works better than my MBP did, which dropped out due to WiFi throughput sometimes. The CPU is at ~55% and and it doesn't appear to be dropping any frames and no noticable de-interlacing artifacts. But then again usually I use the HDHomeRun to stream sports to my laptop, and the only thing on in HD now is a ~11Mbps soap opera.

The 1080i plays fine from the HDD also, and considering the bit rate is ~11Mbps and the 1080p clip from apple is ~10.39Mbps I doubt it is the disk throughput.

I have a copy of the h.264 QT component that I extracted from the ATV around here somewhere, I'll did it up and see if it works any better. I do remember it was considerably better than the h.264 QT component that came with 10.4.

 

[Mal]

You don't know what you are talking about.

Resolution isn't the only factor and if you take a 1080p clip and transcode it to 720p to perfectly fit the MBA like you say, there is more of a chance that you will pick up artifacts in the transcoding process, then in the 1080p to 720p conversion the MBA will do on the fly. Not to mention who wants to spend the time to transcode just to watch a movie on the plane?

No need to be a jerk about it. I do know what I'm talking about, I happen to be a certified tech and a movie junkie. Yes, you get the chance of artifacts from transcoding 1080p down to 720p, but you also get the proper pixel density which provides better clarity and also eliminates the stuttering problems (or at least greatly reduces them). It's more than a worthwhile tradeoff, I'd say.

Oh, and go learn some manners.

jW

 

[bjdraw]

No need to be a jerk about it. I do know what I'm talking about, I happen to be a certified tech and a movie junkie. Yes, you get the chance of artifacts from transcoding 1080p down to 720p, but you also get the proper pixel density which provides better clarity and also eliminates the stuttering problems (or at least greatly reduces them). It's more than a worthwhile tradeoff, I'd say.

Oh, and go learn some manners.

jW

Sorry if I came off too rude, but this MacBook Air forum is one of the hardest I've ever tried to read. There are haters around every corner coming in here just to be jerks. How many posts saying, why would you want to watch 1080p on a MBA do we need in this thread? I apologize for loosing my temper.

As for your argument. "Proper pixel density" not sure what you're talking about, I googled for it and there were five results. If you are referring to one-to-one pixel mapping, then you have a point, but compression artifacts and the time required to transcode 1080p video just to watch it on your laptop, far outweighs a theoretical degradation from scaling 1080p to 720p.

In fact, by default just about every HDTV ever made scales a 1080p image down about 3% on a 1080p TV since overscan is engineered into every HDTV -- yes even Plasmas, LCDs, DLPs and SXRDs. Luckily many newer high end TVs allow you to disable this scaling, but it is referred to differently by each manufacturer. Samsung calls it "Just Scan" while Pioneer calls it "Dot by Dot" for example.

Regardless, you don't see ISF certified technicians claiming that any HDTV without this mode is inferior just because it doesn't offer "proper pixel density" as you put it.

The fact of that matter is that there are many other more important aspects of video quality than resolution.

Do you mind if I ask what kind of HDTV you have?

 

[theappleguy]

The 1080i plays fine from the HDD also, and considering the bit rate is ~11Mbps and the 1080p clip from apple is ~10.39Mbps I doubt it is the disk throughput.

That's good to hear. Thanks.

 

[cherishbearpapa]

According to Cybergypsy , Transformers 1080p mkv plays smooth in Air!!!

Quote Cybergypsy :
"No issues at all plays smooth"

Perhaps for those who didn't get a smooth playback, you may try to plug in the charger to get the maximum performance?

For those who are wondering why i'm asking for this particular movie in 1080p to be tested in Air :
1) I'm aware that 13.3" is only good for 720p, but i would want to plug in my Air to my 50" LCD tv to watch all my 720p/1080p movie. Quoting from Apple website :
"Extended desktop and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 1920 by 1200 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors"

2) Why Transformers 1080p? Because it's a movie sample with the highest video bitrate reaching up to 12 Mb/s, so if Air can handle this meaning it's fully capable of playing 99% of HD out there, at least for those x264 encoded in mkv container.

Again, THANKS a lot folks! Still waiting for the Air to reach my shore! Hah!

 

[bjdraw]

I'd like to know what he used to play it.
I tried a few versions of VLC including the latest nightly build.

 

[ahaxton]

OK that Transformers sample did not play well at all. I suspected it was a crap file or something. I downloaded a 1080p MKV (Transformers) the whole movie and played it to see if it would work. It played smoothly.

 

[luckystrike]

hi from germany!

i read many interesting things here about hidef and the mba but nothing about the fans while watching hidef movies.

ich have a macbook c2d 2.16 and i don´t hear the fans when i watch a 720p
movie on my hd-ready tv upscaled to 1360x768.

how it is with a mba and a 1.6ghz cpu?
please say quite

thanks

 

[Beliyaal]

It was hopeless trying to make my 15 mbit 1080p x264 movie play in OSX, but in Vista it was possible with CoreAVC. CPU usage between 60% and 80%. The fan was howling constantly, and the battery lasted 1 hour 27 minutes.

Specs
MacBook Air 1.8 GHz
60 GB SSD
15 mbit x264 1080p movie
Vista x32
Bluetooth and wireless disabled
Movie on 32 GB usb thumb drive
Screen brightness at 100%

Results:
Movie played without hiccups for 1 hour 27 minutes before battery ran out.

Will try the same with screen at lowest setting when the battery have recharged.

 

[mtk75]

AFor those who are wondering why i'm asking for this particular movie in 1080p to be tested in Air :
1) I'm aware that 13.3" is only good for 720p, but i would want to plug in my Air to my 50" LCD tv to watch all my 720p/1080p movie. Quoting from Apple website :
"Extended desktop and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 1920 by 1200 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors"

2) Why Transformers 1080p? Because it's a movie sample with the highest video bitrate reaching up to 12 Mb/s, so if Air can handle this meaning it's fully capable of playing 99% of HD out there, at least for those x264 encoded in mkv container.

My MBA has not arrived yet, so I cannot check this. I will say, I would expect video to play better on the external 1080p monitor. My reasoning is simple. To play on the normal MBA screen, not only is the movie being decoded, but it is then being downsampled. On an external display with the right resolution, only the decoding is necessary. I'm not certain how much processing that will save, but I expect it to make a difference.

I'll try it hooked up to my TV when the MBA comes in if this hasn't been tested yet.

BTW, if someone knows more about video decoding, and knows how the algorithm works, I would be interested to know if this is correct, or if the decoding process just decodes fewer pixels when it is calculating a different screen size on the fly. (I could only see this as possible if the compression process is using some sort of wavelet compression...)

One last thought, someone said their processor was only at 130% while the video was skipping. I wonder if the decoding process is multithreaded. It could be taking up 100% of one of the processors, but the program might not be set up to take advantage of the second processor. This could result in a situation where the processor is not maxed out, but the video is still not smooth because of processor bandwidth limitations. If that is the problem, I would think that the video could be made to play better by threading. Perhaps by using one processor for decoding, and the other for downsampling. Just a thought...

-Matt

 

[Beliyaal]

My MBA has not arrived yet, so I cannot check this. I will say, I would expect video to play better on the external 1080p monitor. My reasoning is simple. To play on the normal MBA screen, not only is the movie being decoded, but it is then being downsampled. On an external display with the right resolution, only the decoding is necessary. I'm not certain how much processing that will save, but I expect it to make a difference.
-Matt

Most assuredly it will decode at full resolution and use the graphics card to scale the movie. This scaling operation is very cheap on the graphics card, and should not affect performance. I'm not sure what other programs use to scale the video, but VLC uses OpenGL so it uses this method.

 

[FireArse]

Check them out

The Apple 1080p trailers on my 2.16ghz CD MacBook Pro (10.5.1) with 2gb RAM and 256mb ATI X1600 run at 15fps compared to the actual 24fps framerate. In Full Screen it's even worse!

Strangely on my 2.5ghz Dual Core G5 PowerMac with 256mb GeForce 7800 Ultra it's almost as bad! Tried plugging it into a Sony Bravia 1080p TV with HDMI-DVI converter and it ran like a dog!

Haven't tried it on anything newer though but i cannot imagine a MacBook Air would be any better! Especially with such a small processor and integrated graphics

There is something really wrong with both your machines. I suggest you install OS X on a FW drive and try from that - both machines should run 1080p like butter. I had a Dual 2GHz G5 with 9600 that ran 1080p H.264 trailers fine. The MBP should be faster!

 

[mtk75]

Most assuredly it will decode at full resolution and use the graphics card to scale the movie. This scaling operation is very cheap on the graphics card, and should not affect performance. I'm not sure what other programs use to scale the video, but VLC uses OpenGL so it uses this method.

Ah, thank you for the clarification. I didn't even think about the graphics card. (The systems I program for rarely even have an OS...)

-Matt

 

[bjdraw]

This post was completely incorrect, so I removed it in attempt to prevent the spread of misinformation.

 

[Beliyaal]

The Core 2 Dou processor is not the same as having two processors, since both cores are on the same chip and share the same cache, the CPUs internally scheduler can assign handles from the same thread to each core. This is why the both cores are almost always at the same utilization on a multi-core Intel processor. The great thing about this is that every just about every application can take advantage of single-threaded applications, the irony is that some multi-threaded applications (like SQL 2005) have issues with this functionality.

This is just untrue. While the cores share the same cache, the scheduling is entirely up to the operating system. Single threaded applications will gain nothing from a dual core processor other than other processes being offloaded to the other core.

I think you are confusing the issue with hyper-threading.

 

[bjdraw]

This is just untrue. While the cores share the same cache, the scheduling is entirely up to the operating system. Single threaded applications will gain nothing from a dual core processor other than other processes being offloaded to the other core.

I think you are confusing the issue with hyper-threading.

You are right, not sure I managed to muck that up. I guess I was confused with the OS schedule, I guess all my apps are multi-threaded, as both my cores are almost always at the exact same utilization.

 

[Beliyaal]

You are right, not sure I managed to muck that up. I guess I was confused with the OS schedule, I guess all my apps are multi-threaded, as both my cores are almost always at the exact same utilization.

I could be wrong, but I think the OS switches the process between the cores to conserve power. So the process would run one slice (a couple of ms) on one core, and than be rescheduled to the other core alternately.

 

[brianjmarshall@]

I was too impatient to read all of the posts, so sorry if this was already brought up, but I streamed the 1080P wall*e trailer and watched it full screen, half size, and full size (with the picture bleeding off the screen), with zero jittering or stutters, no artifacts, and it looked damn good. I mean, I know that in theory, 720P will look just as amazing but I'm just saying...

 

[bjdraw]

I could be wrong, but I think the OS switches the process between the cores to conserve power. So the process would run one slice (a couple of ms) on one core, and than be rescheduled to the other core alternately.

Maybe that is what I was thinking of when I said scheduler. That makes sense that the OS could split a single thread so fast that it'd seem like both cores were working on it at the same time.

 

[designed]

720p MKV-files run fine with VLC - for a while. Then it apparently decides to start stuttering. My best guess is dropping the other core due heat, since the temp is up and the fan has been screaming for 10 minutes at that point but still makes me feel disbelief, especially since there's quite much CPU time to spare at that point.

I could understand not being able to handle 1080p but 720p? Come on Steve...

1.8/64