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macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 18, 2006
26
0
hey,
I'm currently in the process of writing some software which is aimed at audio playback, video playback / video generation + manipulation, whilst reading from the iSight. I ultimately intend on using it on a laptop, and currently posses a macbook. I'm sure when it's done it will run fine on my desktop, however I'm not sure if the video card on the macbook will take it. I'm wondering if an upgrade to MBP will be necessary. To help give an indication, I was wondering if someone could quickly check something out on a MBP please-

with ONLY activity monitor, itunes and iMovie open, play an AIFF or WAV file in iTunes and turn the visuliser on (to a large screen size, not full screen) whilst that's going on, use imovie to record from the iSight camera, and then check out the stats on activity monitor...
if you could also please include your macbook model and memory

this should help me give some indication how much easier the MBP will handle the graphic processing my software will carry out.
I'd appreciate anything you're able to find out for me, thanks very much
Tom
 

Coheebuzz

macrumors 6502a
Oct 10, 2005
511
148
Nicosia, Cyprus
Here is a screenshot of Activity Monitor on a MBP 1.83 GHz with 1GB RAM.
 

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macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 18, 2006
26
0
thanks very much for helping me out!
hmm.... there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of difference between them- I'm a little surprised. I'm running a macbook 2GHz with 2GB. I would have thought the graphics card would make a significant difference. If I am to go macbook pro, I'd probably opt for the 2.16 15" model. Does anyone else out there have a different specced MBP I can compare with?
thanks very much
tom
 

joebells

macrumors 6502
Oct 24, 2005
425
0
my macs at the shop still so I can't check but does activty monitor use comma's by default? Instead of periods?
 

Nar1117

macrumors 6502
Apr 15, 2006
313
5
Yeah, im running a 2.16 with 2 gb RAM, here are pics:
 

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macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 18, 2006
26
0
hey... originally posted this thread a while ago, but I was just wondering if someone could please help me out with one more thing?
The software I'm making has developed a lot since the original post, but I'm intested in one more thing, re. quicktimemove playback... Does the video card get used for it?
Does anyone know?
If anyone out there with MBP could please do a little test?
With just the the activity monitor and quicktime open, playback 2 .mov (mpeg4) movies at 640 x 460, 'least quality compression' at 12fps? If someone could please report the results with BOTH movies playing at the same time?
don't have 2 .mov's with my compression setting?
download some of my own:

http://registernoise.co.uk/movie/0.mov

and

http://registernoise.co.uk/movie/1.mov

I'd really appreiciate any help!
thanks!
 
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