HD 1080p in MacBook Air ?

[bjdraw]

I noticed the stuttering too, but I'm not sure it's the heat. I've always had problems playing back mkv in vlc, so I always figured it was VLC.

I guess the only way to tell is to try to play back the same movie on two different machines in the same version of VLC, and note the temperature and time line of the movie when the stuttering starts.

Then repeat at another time and see if the stuttering starts when the movie hits the same part or the temperature is the same.

 

[ahaxton]

Remember to unplug the power adapter before starting playback of a MKV. I've only had stuttering while the power adapter was plugged in.

 

[designed]

Remember to unplug the power adapter before starting playback of a MKV. I've only had stuttering while the power adapter was plugged in.

Apparently so, even YouTube seems to run 'cooler' unplugged. I'd say the thermal envelope is a *bit*

Will try 720p MKVs with Quicktime today.

 

[erlen]

HD 1080p in the NEW MBA?

Hello, I see it's been a while since anyone posted here.

Does anyone know if the new MBA - with Montevina and NVIDIA etc. - will do any better with 1080p?

Thanks.

 

[RRutter]

Hello all ,

For those of you who already received your Air, could you please try a 1080p trailer at the below link to test the smoothness of HD playback in Air?

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/walle/hd/

Also wondering if 1080p x264 .mkv HD will have a smooth playback in Air?

Thank you very much in advance!

Not sure what you mean.. Do you mean the built in 1080 support in the Drive for the MBA, or connecting the MBA to a 1080i TV? If you are talking about option 2, click it and it will forward you to a similar post.

System requirements for 1080p HD video.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/recommendations.html

Edit: Those are System Recommendations, not System Requirements.

 

[spencers]

Not sure what you mean.. Do you mean the built in 1080 support in the Drive for the MBA, or connecting the MBA to a 1080i TV? If you are talking about option 2, click it and it will forward you to a similar post.

Edit: Those are System Recommendations, not System Requirements.

Read the dates on the posts you quoted. They're old.

 

[piimaPAKK]

VLC used to suck for 1080p content, maybe they changed it but when i tried last time it was all jittery on my desktop with Athlon 3800X2 and 2gb of ram.
While KMediaplayer and QT play 1080p silky smooth on the same rig.

 

[azndevil]

Here's a test for the macbook air that i did myself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CCQGBIO7YA

all the specs are in the side bar

 

[Cave Man]

It'll play Blu-ray rips just fine, so long as you use the right software and extract the AC3 or DTS cores. HD audio brings it to its knees.

 

[coast1ja]

holy thread resurrection, Batman!

 

[msdoanne]

Bummer...

I just bought an 11 inch macbook air, and tried to play a 1080p mkv file. The file plays smooth when there isn't a lot of music/sound in the background, but when the movie breaks out into symphony, the video becomes very pixelated, choppy, and freezes. It's such a bummer! I really love this computer for how portable it is but I am having second thoughts.

 

[57004]

I just bought an 11 inch macbook air, and tried to play a 1080p mkv file. The file plays smooth when there isn't a lot of music/sound in the background, but when the movie breaks out into symphony, the video becomes very pixelated, choppy, and freezes. It's such a bummer! I really love this computer for how portable it is but I am having second thoughts.

Try using MKVTools to convert MKV's to MP4. It doesn't tuoch the video material, it just changes the container so it doesn't need to re-encode frame by frame, it's very fast. If necessary it can re-encode the audio to AAC but even that is still much faster than recoding audio+video.

The advantage of that is that QuickTime X supports hardware acceleration for H.264 (including x264) material, but only in an MP4 container. VLC doesn't support any kind of acceleration so it only has the slow CPU to work with.

I always use it to convert 720p stuff to play on the iPad, but it should also work with 1080p to play it on the MBA with hardware decoding. It should play fine then because the GPU is plenty fast for it.

 

[Oldandintheway]

Video Playback

I copied this from another thread. It fixed my video playback problems and apparently works for gaming too.
1) Do a clean install of OS X to 10.6.5.
2) Download 10.6.6 from Apple (http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1343)
3) Optional, but recommended: Backup your data via Time Machine.
4) Download 10.6.7 from Apple (http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1363)

And there you have it. Instead of installing the double-update, simply download each update, individually. 1080 videos from my D7000 would not play smooth at 10.6.7 but played perfectly at 10.6.5. I later update to 10.6.6 and they played perfectly and then to 10.6.7 and they played perfectly. I'll try your link tonight when I get home but try this on yours. I have the base model.

11.6"
1.4ghz
2gb ram
64gb hd

 

[Cave Man]

I just bought an 11 inch macbook air, and tried to play a 1080p mkv file. The file plays smooth when there isn't a lot of music/sound in the background, but when the movie breaks out into symphony, the video becomes very pixelated, choppy, and freezes.

I have difficulty believing that it's the computer and not the software you're using for playback or the file itself because my previous gen 1.83 gHz MBA plays Blu-ray rips just fine, so long as the HD audio has been removed (e.g., AC3 or DTS in the container). Where did you get the file? Did you rip it? What was its original source? What are the audio and video codecs of the file? Have you played the file on another Mac that is faster? If so, does the problem persist? What software are you using for playback?

 

[Beanoir]

Why even bother with 1080p videos on a screen that doesn't have that high a resolution, pointless unless your video collection is all 1080p already then I could understand it as it won't look any better, infact worse if the processor can't handle it and it's all jumpy. If not then you may as well download 720p stuff, save space on your HDD and stand more chance of the video being smoother too.

 

[rgs3]

Why even bother with 1080p videos on a screen that doesn't have that high a resolution, pointless unless your video collection is all 1080p already then I could understand it as it won't look any better, infact worse if the processor can't handle it and it's all jumpy. If not then you may as well download 720p stuff, save space on your HDD and stand more chance of the video being smoother too.

I bother because of that awesome display port hooked up to my 1080p TV.

 

[Beanoir]

I bother because of that awesome display port hooked up to my 1080p TV.

I tried that today funnily enough. Picked up an adapter and a play around. I couldn't get the screen to fit very well, I know it's a different ratio but whatever way I tried it I couldn't get the top bar to display on the TV screen.

 

[Meric]

I played the 1080p day at work clip... cpu was 70-80 % idle... cpu temp 60-66
fan speed was 2000 rpm then went up to 2400..

then played the trailer 3... fan went up from 2400 to 3100 rpm...

 

[theturtle]

boo. was watching star trek on netflix yesterday. continuous fan through out the movie. when i went full screen, frame drops like no other.

not a big drawback, but a drawback none the less. beginning to wonder if the macbook pro is the better option. but darn, the weight of the pro just kills me (also the resale value is less than the air even though it has a newer processor)

 

[BENJMNS]

boo. was watching star trek on netflix yesterday. continuous fan through out the movie. when i went full screen, frame drops like no other.

not a big drawback, but a drawback none the less. beginning to wonder if the macbook pro is the better option. but darn, the weight of the pro just kills me (also the resale value is less than the air even though it has a newer processor)

your mba hardware setup matters. 11 ult falls short with hd.

 

[theturtle]

your mba hardware setup matters. 11 ult falls short with hd.

running a base 13"

 

[Beanoir]

Well I've just downloaded the WALL.E trailer in 1080p form the OP's first post. My 11" MBA is base spec and I saved it to my hard drive, played it in full screen and it was fine, smooth and trouble free.