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MacBook playing 1080p

D

dav

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 29, 2004
495
10
It chokes.

MacBook 2.0 GHz 2GB RAM and it stutters and is terrible. I usually play my 720p .mkv files through VLC and there is no problem at all. Also, any quicktime 1080p .mov files play smoothly as well. I can even play two at the same time no problem.

What do I need to do to optimize for these beastly 1080p x264 .mkv files? I tried mplayer and it is better, but still not great by any means. Is my computer even capable? I bought it thinking it would play 1080p files (judging by the reports of people playing quicktime trailers) and now it is struggling with this newfound filetype.

Thoughts? Solutions? Is there any better Matroska playback setup?

(Note: these are .mkv 1080p x264 files, not the .mov files off of Quicktime Trailers or the like)

I have a 100 MB sample that my tests are based off of with some quick action scenes.
 
Since you say Quicktime plays fine, I assume the problem may lie within either the VLC player or the .mkv file format handling.

I know 1080p is not a problem on all modern mac computers (CoreDuo and up).
 
MajereXYU said:
Since you say Quicktime plays fine, I assume the problem may lie within either the VLC player or the .mkv file format handling.

I know 1080p is not a problem on all modern mac computers (CoreDuo and up).
Click to expand...

my MBP 2.0ghz core duo w/ 2gb ram and 256mb vram stutters when playing a 1080p movie file on Quicktime Pro. you see frame rates drop drastically through different parts of the movie (parts when there's a lot of movement, light, colors etc.). the MP on the other hand runs flawlessly.
 
weird

I have a Core Duo MBP and it can play MULTIPLE 1080P videos.

You might want to check your Internet Service Provider. (ISP)
 
Have you made sure you have the lastest Security Updates? I've never had a problem with 720p or 1080p video on my CD MBP. What kind of internet are you using? DSL?
 
@iQuit: internet service is irrelevant. This is a local file, and it will not play. It is not a Quicktime 1080p file, those play fine.

Here is a sample x264 1080p file. Test it on your computer and post your results.



(About 80 seconds from Kill Bill 2, somewhat graphic... Use Pando to download it if you want to test it out. Use mplayer or VLC to attempt to watch it)
 
I play the trailors from the Apple site all the same in 1080p and theyre fine...
 
WorldIRC said:
I play the trailors from the Apple site all the same in 1080p and theyre fine...
Click to expand...

Like I said, this is not an Apple 1080p file. Those are highly optimized and play fine. Try the one I posted.
 
dav said:
@iQuit: internet service is irrelevant. This is a local file, and it will not play. It is not a Quicktime 1080p file, those play fine.

Here is a sample x264 1080p file. Test it on your computer and post your results.



(About 80 seconds from Kill Bill 2, somewhat graphic... Use Pando to download it if you want to test it out. Use mplayer or VLC to attempt to watch it)
Click to expand...

Why should I install some extraneous piece of software that I'll never use just to help you out? Next time, use somewhere like Rapidshare or sendspace, I would have no problem helping then.

That said, I have the same problems as you. Stuttering, etc. I would think it's a result of the low VRAM in our laptops and them really not being designed to play 1080P content (they can't officially drive large 1080P screens. I think the highest we can do is 720P.
 
I think x264 in .mkv is your problem to begin with.

purelithium said:
Why should I install some extraneous piece of software that I'll never use just to help you out? Next time, use somewhere like Rapidshare or sendspace, I would have no problem helping then.

That said, I have the same problems as you. Stuttering, etc. I would think it's a result of the low VRAM in our laptops and them really not being designed to play 1080P content (they can't officially drive large 1080P screens. I think the highest we can do is 720P.
Click to expand...
1. Extraneous piece of software, hell no.
2. Video card? It's CPU bound.
 
Is 1080p high definition?

I have always had this doubt, can a MB play high definition movies? Is the screen even high definition capable?

Thanks,
 
Roco said:
Is 1080p high definition?

I have always had this doubt, can a MB play high definition movies? Is the screen even high definition capable?

Thanks,
Click to expand...

Yes, 1080p is high definition, along with 720p.

Yes, macbooks can play high definition movies but they cannot read blu-ray disks or HD-DVD disks.

I believe macbook screens can display all the pixels of 720p content, but 1080p is too big. It would need to be shunk down to the size of the MB screen.

Cheers :)
 
I hate software as much as the next guy, but the file was bigger than 100MB, and until now I had never heard of sendspace :). Pando is not spyware/bugged at all, it's quite nice for sending stuff. I will post it to sendspace.

@Eidorian: 1080p in .mkv is quite common these days.

Sample

http://www.sendspace.com/file/gcgze7

Once again I warn you it might be a little graphic for some, it is about a minute from Kill Bill 2, just a sample to test. Just let me know if your computer can handle it. Play it with VLC or Mplayer. My MacBook with 2GB RAM 2GHz can't play the thing smoothly.

Apparently I have been told that these files will play in XP via Boot Camp. It could simply be an optimization issue. Try it for yourself.
 
dav said:
I hate software as much as the next guy, but the file was bigger than 100MB, and until now I had never heard of sendspace :). Pando is not spyware/bugged at all, it's quite nice for sending stuff. I will post it to sendspace.
Click to expand...
Thanks

dav said:
@Eidorian: 1080p in .mkv is quite common these days.

Sample

http://www.sendspace.com/file/gcgze7

Once again I warn you it might be a little graphic for some, it is about a minute from Kill Bill 2, just a sample to test. Just let me know if your computer can handle it. Play it with VLC or Mplayer. My MacBook with 2GB RAM 2GHz can't play the thing smoothly.

Apparently I have been told that these files will play in XP via Boot Camp. It could simply be an optimization issue. Try it for yourself.
Click to expand...
1. I know
2. No, really I do know.
3. What do you use in OS X to play .mkv files?
4. VLC had rather broken (stupid high CPU and stuttering) xh264 in .mkv container playback until 0.85. Even so it's still not great.
5. I'll try it on my Mac mini tomorrow. (It works fine in VLC on my iMac but Quicktime w/Perian 1.0b4 chokes.)
 
I would take a look at getting CoreAVC and running it with bootcamp and winxp, it is quite the speedy decoder of avc. You must remember however that 1080P video decoding is a stressful task for all but the monster Mac Pros and their PC workstation brethren, dual core is pretty much the bare minimum when it comes to 1080P. Hardware decoding (as in GPU based decoding) is the only proper way for the future; nobody wants 100% cpu usage when watching a movie. Both main gpu companies already have this, and the latest nvidia efforts have brought cpu usage down to 20%, I suspect ati will manage similarly.

The thing with the apple trailers is that they have all been encoded to work properly in quicktime, since quicktime itself doesn't support all the tricks that the avc spec has to offer. There is no such thing as an 'apple file', this is all avc in some form or another.

For kicks I tried your sample in VLC on my Pentium M 1.86Ghz, 1GB ram, and it was Kill Bill: The Slideshow :D. Mplayer however, worked quite okay (I judge it to be 15fps) but the colours were quite screwed up, but gave the video a nice pop-art kinda feel!
 
dukebound85 said:
pando is a good piece of software for sending big files....
Click to expand...

Yeah, but who wants to install something to download a file off the internet? Isn't that already handled pretty well by your browser?

I'm downloading the sample now and while I have a Mac Pro, I'll let you know what kind of CPU utilization I see in QT and VLC.

BTW: You mean to tell me this is an HD-quality clip of a copyrighted movie you are openly distributing on the MR forums? I like your style. ;)
 
Played great with no stutters, but you can see the CPU usage is pretty heavy for 4 cores. I can imagine this would be rough on a MB.

I couldn't get QT to play the file even with Perian.
 

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I have a mac mini 1.66 CD w/ 2 gig ram.

The sample played fine under quicktime, of course there is no passthrough so there was no sound, Im using perian 1.0 beta. VLC of course couldn't handle it but that is expected, VLC has yet to support dual cores.
 
Eidorian said:
Might be able to slip in if you're under 30 seconds and for review purposes. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Apparently all HD content in any useful form is illegal these days...
Eidorian said:
Do you have the 1.0 Beta?
Click to expand...
No, I don't. I installed b4 and it plays with about the same CPU utilzation as VLC in the previous screen grab. No sound.
khisayruou said:
VLC of course couldn't handle it but that is expected, VLC has yet to support dual cores.
Click to expand...

You sure about that? The screen grab a couple posts back of my 4-core Mac Pro is using VLC and it distributed pretty evenly across all 4.
 
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