iTunes can play 1080p but not Quicktime X?

[Mr Dobey]

Just ripped a Blu-Ray to .mkv than encoded with Handbrake to 1920x1080 at 6000kbps. iTunes plays the movie fine but Quicktime X adds playback jitter and stuttering. I thought iTunes was built around quicktime? The .mkv plays fine with movist and plex so it's not the file. I tried again this time encoding at a lower 4000kbps and still the same result.

Why would iTunes be able to handle a large movie with ease and not QT X?


life would be so simple if iTunes and Quicktime X played .mkv

 

[jaw04005]

I’m fairly certain iTunes 9 doesn’t use QuickTime X for playback yet. It uses the older QuickTime 7 kit.

Does QuickTime 7 play back the file?

 

[Mr Dobey]

correct

Quicktime 7 will play the movie under Snow Leopard, but still with a few bumps where as iTunes 9 has absolutely no problems.

 

[TheNightPhoenix]

Are you playing it at the same size in both iTunes and Quicktime?

 

[Mr Dobey]

Yep

Both Full Screen

 

[DoFoT9]

quicktime is probably the worst coded application i have ever seen. i was hoping they would do a re-write in SL but evidently not. you would think that it would be able to play a 6000kbps movie! thats not even HD.

what computer are you playing on? what is the GPU?

 

[Mr Dobey]

MacBook Pro

(Rev 2,2) MacBook Pro 15" 2.33Ghz. Core 2 Duo

ATI Radeon X1600.

With a 1920x1200 screen I put in, so full screen video load is a bit more than the standard 1440x900.

 

[DoFoT9]

(Rev 2,2) MacBook Pro 15" 2.33Ghz. Core 2 Duo

ATI Radeon X1600.

With a 1920x1200 screen I put in, so full screen video load is a bit more than the standard 1440x900.

ok and the fact that you dont have an OpenCL compatible card wouldnt help (as QTX would need that to do most of its playback efficiently).

change your screen resolution to something smaller and try again.

 

[GreatDrok]

Just ripped a Blu-Ray to .mkv than encoded with Handbrake to 1920x1080 at 6000kbps.

1080p at 6K? Blech! I do my 720p encodes at that rate because anything less results in significant softening of the image. Trying to encode twice as many pixels at the same data rate is definitely going to result in a compromised image especially fast motion and fine detail.

As for QuickTime 7 versus QuickTime X, I have to say that on my MacBook Pro which is slower than yours since it is a 1st gen, QTX plays my 720p rips smoothly with little processor overhead even though my machine has an old ATI X1600 like yours whereas QT7 stutters like mad. I haven't tried a 1080p rip as yet since I'm not actually that bothered as I have the original BD/HD DVD to play and I want my rips to play on my ATV.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

ok and the fact that you dont have an OpenCL compatible card wouldnt help (as QTX would need that to do most of its playback efficiently).

change your screen resolution to something smaller and try again.

That's not the main issue. He modded it with a custom 1920x1200 panel.

 

[jaw04005]

ok and the fact that you dont have an OpenCL compatible card wouldnt help (as QTX would need that to do most of its playback efficiently).

change your screen resolution to something smaller and try again.

What does OpenCL have to do with QuickTime X playback?

I would suggest this:

1. Turn off "use high-quality video setting when available" in QuickTime 7's preferences and try the file again. iTunes does not use this setting.
2. If that doesn't fix it, re-encode the file using Handbrake's latest Snapshot release.
3. Try the file again on a 10.5 Leopard machine using QuickTime 7 to compare.

If it still doesn't work:

QuickTime 7 likely has issues under Snow Leopard. I would file a bug report.

By the way, your custom modded screen shouldn't matter. It would be just like hooking an external monitor up to your MacBook. The X1600 should be able to get decent HD playback at that resolution.

 

[DoFoT9]

1080p at 6K? Blech! I do my 720p encodes at that rate because anything less results in significant softening of the image. Trying to encode twice as many pixels at the same data rate is definitely going to result in a compromised image especially fast motion and fine detail.

As for QuickTime 7 versus QuickTime X, I have to say that on my MacBook Pro which is slower than yours since it is a 1st gen, QTX plays my 720p rips smoothly with little processor overhead even though my machine has an old ATI X1600 like yours whereas QT7 stutters like mad. I haven't tried a 1080p rip as yet since I'm not actually that bothered as I have the original BD/HD DVD to play and I want my rips to play on my ATV.

my Leopard CD MBP struggles to play 1080p movies (have to be played with Plex), 720p is fine generally, CPU usage sits around 50% per core.

That's not the main issue. He modded it with a custom 1920x1200 panel.

yes i realise that. what does that have to do with anything? we can rule the resolution of the screen out, as iTunes can play it flawlessly. (unless iTunes does some sort of downscaling??)

What does OpenCL have to do with QuickTime X playback?

uhh...QTx uses the GPU (or part of) to render the movies?? the x1600 isnt supported in QTx, so all of the processing is given to the CPU - maybe apple didnt (or dont care) think about us older users?

If it still doesn't work:

QuickTime 7 likely has issues under Snow Leopard. I would file a bug report.

By the way, your custom modded screen shouldn't matter. It would be just like hooking an external monitor up to your MacBook. The X1600 should be able to get decent HD playback at that resolution.

at those bitrates yes, higher bitrates do struggle a bit.

i would like to know what the format of the movie is. maybe there is some sort of compatibility issue that we are not aware of? did you use h264? etc

 

[fpnc]

The only graphics card from Apple that supports hardware accelerated H.264 playback is the NVIDIA 9400M. That's why even my lowly 2.0GHz MacBook can play several 1080p videos at once without problems.

 

[Peace]

The only graphics card from Apple that supports hardware accelerated H.264 playback is the NVIDIA 9400M. That's why even my lowly 2.0GHz MacBook can play several 1080p videos at once without problems.

Thats not true. The Geforce GTX285 does the same in a Mac Pro. It may not "be" from Apple but then again neither is the 9400M. Technically.

 

[DoFoT9]

The only graphics card from Apple that supports hardware accelerated H.264 playback is the NVIDIA 9400M. That's why even my lowly 2.0GHz MacBook can play several 1080p videos at once without problems.

please do not privde information that you do not know the answers to.

currently, Open CL is supported on the following GPUs (direct from apple):
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, GeForce GTX 285, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX5600
• ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870

http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

 

[Mr Dobey]

I can play 1080p but ...

I can play a full .mkv 1080p Blu-Ray rip with Plex just fine (though tons of heat and 6000 rpm fan noise)

The question was that I wanted to encode these movies to an iTunes and Quicktime X compatible format and found that Quicktime X was lagging at even a tiny bit rate like 6000kbps.

I have not been able to run my display at a lower resolution (say 1440x900) because it was a big enough pain just to get one custom resolution to work. read more here on the mod if you like.

Good (or should I say bad) to know that my GPU does not support Open CL.

 

[DoFoT9]

Dobey, out of interest, is it possible at all for you to check these things (in Activity monitor) whilst playing the movies both in iTunes and QTx?

1. CPU usage
2. HDD i/o rate
3. RAM being used by the program you are watching.

i assume that you are watching the movies off the local HDD, and not off a network drive?

 

[jaw04005]

uhh...QTx uses the GPU (or part of) to render the movies?? the x1600 isnt supported in QTx, so all of the processing is given to the CPU - maybe apple didnt (or dont care) think about us older users?

please do not privde information that you do not know the answers to.

currently, Open CL is supported on the following GPUs (direct from apple):
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, GeForce GTX 285, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX5600
• ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870

http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

OpenCL has absolutely nothing to do with QuickTime hardware decoding or playback. It's a programming language for GPUs.

They are two different technologies. FPNC was right. The only graphic card that Apple official states that supports "QuickTime hardware h.264 acceleration" is the 9400m.

"QuickTime H.264 hardware acceleration requires a Mac with an NVIDIA 9400M graphics processor."

http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

This limitation is likely an Apple driver issue more than anything else. As other cards on the PC side have supported h.264 decoding for years including the same cards that ship with other Apple products.

The only logical feature in QuickTime X that could possibly take advantage of OpenCL is exporting. However, Quicktime X doesn't use OpenCL as far as I know. OpenCL essentially turns your GPU into a CPU for intensive tasks (like video encoding).

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/#opencl

 

[fpnc]

OpenCL has absolutely nothing to do with QuickTime hardware decoding or playback. It's a programming language for GPUs.

They are two different technologies. FPNC was right. The only graphic card that Apple official states that supports "QuickTime hardware h.264 acceleration" is the 9400m.

"QuickTime H.264 hardware acceleration requires a Mac with an NVIDIA 9400M graphics processor."

http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

This limitation is likely an Apple driver issue more than anything else. As other cards on the PC side have supported h.264 decoding for years including the same cards that ship with other Apple products.

The only logical feature in QuickTime X that could possibly take advantage of OpenCL is exporting. However, Quicktime X doesn't use OpenCL as far as I know. OpenCL essentially turns your GPU into a CPU for intensive tasks (like video encoding).

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/#opencl

Thank you, jaw04005, for setting the record straight. Not only does Apple clearly state that the 9400M is the only GPU that supports H.264 acceleration but this has been common knowledge to anyone who has attended Apple's World Wide Developers Conferences each year. In fact, the 9400M did H.264 acceleration even before Snow Leopard and OpenCL.

As a side note, I can report that my 2.0GHz MacBook plays Apple's H.264 HD video with less CPU overhead than does my 2.66GHz, dual-Xeon Mac Pro.

 

[DoFoT9]

well, i guess that puts me in my place lol.

i apologise for my confusion.

PureVideo has been supported for an eternity, why hasnt apple implemented the playback acceleration in all of the GPUs?

and yes, i remember reading that the 9400s supported h264 acceleration (pre SL), nvidia have had it since series 6!!

 

[jaw04005]

well, i guess that puts me in my place lol.

i apologise for my confusion.

PureVideo has been supported for an eternity, why hasnt apple implemented the playback acceleration in all of the GPUs?

Sometimes I think it would serve Apple well to have NVIDIA and ATI write the actual drivers. Even the relatively crappy X1600 mentioned above supports h.264 decoding in Windows.

"Accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264 decoding and transcoding.”

http://ati.amd.com/products/mobilityradeonx1600/specs.html

 

[DoFoT9]

Sometimes I think it would serve Apple well to have NVIDIA and ATI write the actual drivers. Even the relatively crappy X1600 mentioned above supports h.264 decoding in Windows.

"Accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264 decoding and transcoding.”

http://ati.amd.com/products/mobilityradeonx1600/specs.html

that would be very nice. updates would be an actual occurrence then! i have always wondered how good apple is at producing the drivers. we often see different frame rates to PC games (there are more factors here then just the coders though, such as OpenGL instead of DirectX etcetc), but it would be nice to know how efficient the guys at apple actually are.

maybe letting the companies do it would be a nice change? def would get more support for things!

 

[Mr Dobey]

Results

Dobey, out of interest, is it possible at all for you to check these things (in Activity monitor) whilst playing the movies both in iTunes and QTx?

1. CPU usage
2. HDD i/o rate
3. RAM being used by the program you are watching.

i assume that you are watching the movies off the local HDD, and not off a network drive?

Here are my QTX results from watching a 6000kbs encode of 'Passengers' Blu-Ray. Yes, the movie is playing of my internal 500GB 7200 RPM Seagate SATA drive.

I'm in the process of transferring my iTunes library right now so I'll get the results a little later.