Macbook Air 11in Ultimate lags on 1080p HD movies

[ZenoVT]

Just recently bought my macbook air 11in Ultimate. I tried to watch a 1080p HD movie recently and it lags every once in awhile, especially at certain action scenes and water scenes.

The file is an mkv file that is @ about 11gb, and I am using VLC as my player.

Do you guys have any recommendations as what I should be using to watch the HD movies?

Playing using QuickTime lags even more than VLC. I thought the Geforce 320M should be sufficient enough to decode HD films.

I have yet to try a 720p film yet.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Try Movist.

You can also analyse the movie via VideoSpec and see what it says under Additional Parameters >>> Reference Frames.
If it is bigger than "8", then that might be the cause of the problem.

...

*** Video Track Parameters ***
- Format: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
- Size: 4.79 GiB (73%)
- FourCC: avc1
- Track number(s): 0
- Bitrate: Max.: Undefined
Average: 4 404 Kbps
Min.: Undefined
- Frame rate (fps): Max.: Undefined
Average: 24.000
Min.: Undefined
- Bitrate mode: Undefined
- Encoding profile: High@L4.1
- Resolution: 24 bits
- Width (Pixel number): 1280
- Height (Pixel number): 544
- Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1:1
- Display aspect ratio: 40:17
- Chroma subsampling format: YUV420p
- TV standard: Undefined
- Interlacing: Progressive
- Encoding library: x264 core 104 r1677 19df41a
- Additional Parameters: CABAC: Yes
Reference Frames: 5
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) ratio: 0.264
Muxing mode: Unknown@4.1

*** Audio Track(s) Parameters ***
- Format: DTS Coherent Acoustics
- Size: 1.64 GiB (25%)
- FourCC: 0x2001
- Number(s) and language(s): 2: Undefined
- Details: -
- Profile: Undefined
- Bitrate: 1 510 Kbps
- Bitrate mode: Constant
- Resolution: 24 bits
- Rate: 48.0 KHz
- Channel(s): 5:1 - 6 channels
- Position: Front: L C R, Surround: L R, LFE
- Encoding Library: Undefined
- Additional Parameters: Not available
...

 

[jamesryanbell]

Is that something that's changeable (reference frames)?

 

[ZenoVT]

*** Video Track Parameters ***
- Format: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
- Size: 9.14 GiB (84%)
- FourCC: avc1
- Track number(s): 0
- Bitrate: Max.: Undefined
Average: 8 839 Kbps
Min.: Undefined
- Frame rate (fps): Max.: Undefined
Average: 23.976
Min.: Undefined
- Bitrate mode: Undefined
- Encoding profile: High@L4.1
- Resolution: 24 bits
- Width (Pixel number): 1920
- Height (Pixel number): 800
- Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1:1
- Display aspect ratio: 12:5
- Chroma subsampling format: YUV420p
- TV standard: Undefined
- Interlacing: Progressive
- Encoding library: x264 core 107 r1766 f9f0035
- Additional Parameters: CABAC: Yes
Reference Frames: 5
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) ratio: 0.240
Muxing mode: Unknown@4.1

*** Audio Track(s) Parameters ***
- Format: DTS Coherent Acoustics
- Size: 1.56 GiB (14%)
- FourCC: 0x2001
- Number(s) and language(s): 2: Undefined
- Details: -
- Profile: Undefined
- Bitrate: 1 510 Kbps
- Bitrate mode: Constant
- Resolution: 24 bits
- Rate: 48.0 KHz
- Channel(s): 5:1 - 6 channels
- Position: Front: L C R, Surround: L R, LFE
- Encoding Library: Undefined

 

[MiBook84]

why even bother with 1080p on a small with a screen that has a much lower resolution than 1080p? 720p is better on the 11" and also less work for the cpu/gpu.. and smaller files for the ssd..

Btw, try plex for HD instead, works better than VLC because VLC doesnt have hardware acceleration yet.

 

[superdudeo]

i have the dark knight as a 15GB mkv on my 13" 4GB. It runs fine although you can tell it's working its butt off!

 

[Insilin1i]

Try using MPlayer OSX Extended.

 

[ZenoVT]

why even bother with 1080p on a small with a screen that has a much lower resolution than 1080p? 720p is better on the 11" and also less work for the cpu/gpu.. and smaller files for the ssd..

Btw, try plex for HD instead, works better than VLC because VLC doesnt have hardware acceleration yet.

I have my Air connected to an external monitor

 

[MiBook84]

I have my Air connected to an external monitor

Ok =) then it makes some sense I guess =) but you do realize that the macbook air is made for lightweight computing, not heavyweight hd-processing? =)

 

[ZenoVT]

I really like how MPlayer let's me watch in HD on my external while still use my laptops screen to surf the net and chat at the same time, but still lags like crazy.

 

[ZenoVT]

Update: Plex seems to work, but their interface is hardly easy to use just to casually watch movies