MBP struggling with bluray files :(

DezUk

DezUk

DezUk

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I wanted to ask fellow mac owners some advice. I have a MBP with 2.53Ghz chip and 4Gb ram with the additional gfx option. Anyway when i try and run any bluray content (talking mkv file format using x264 encoding in VLC) the cpu gets rattled and the video stutters etc.

I personally thought a MBP of this spec would be able to handle playing this sort of video, any ideas or is it just not powerful enough?
 
VLC is utter crap with .MKV files.

I've ripped 90+ Blu-Rays and when I try to skip through them in VLC it crashes, everytime.

Download Plex and have a go with that. It's a media centre app but it'll play anything.

(I play full 1080p rips on a new Mac Mini, of similar spec)
 
DezUk said:
I wanted to ask fellow mac owners some advice. I have a MBP with 2.53Ghz chip and 4Gb ram with the additional gfx option. Anyway when i try and run any bluray content (talking mkv file format using x264 encoding in VLC) the cpu gets rattled and the video stutters etc.

I personally thought a MBP of this spec would be able to handle playing this sort of video, any ideas or is it just not powerful enough?
Click to expand...

The problem is OSX, not the hardware. I believe no (non-Apple?) apps can use GPU acceleration for video playback. So all decoding of video is done via software. The graphics card you have, is irrelevant, as it's features cannot be fully used for video playback.

Both VLC and Plex are limited in this way. VLC uses single core of CPU and software to decode the video, I believe Plex can use 2 cores (maybe more), but again it is all CPU and software. I think either solution will probably use about 20-25% of your CPU which is quite high. This is also the reason Flash player and other web based HD content is slow/stutters/uses a lot of cpu/causes heating issues on Macs.

In the windows world most media players use hardware functions to accelerate video decoding/playback, on the Mac it is all a bit "locked down", in comparison.


rp2000
 
I doubt the problem is your CPU. Hardware acceleration or not, I've tested my MBP with three 1080p MKV's at the same time and slowdown only occured with a 4th.

I have noticed a problem with VLC and MKV's when files are stores on an external harddrive, possibly due to a slower transfer speed? What happens when you move the files to your desktop or something?
 
DezUk said:
Well when i loaded the files in VLC my cpu was totally maxed and i watched it hit 100C :O
Click to expand...

Something sounds wrong there...aside from performance, the fans on my MBP don't kick in at all. It's like it's doing nothing.

Admittedly I have the 2.8GHz MBP, but it shouldn't make that much of a difference...
 
Well the fact that it's hitting 100degC may be the reason you're seeing stuttering due to thermal throttling.

I have a MBP 3,1 C2D 2.4GHz and it does 1080p. Although if it's uncompressed then you need to check the HD speed as a 5400rpm drive won't cut it.
 
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