Playing HD films in OSX
So I have an 11gig mkv of the Dark Knight, but VLC is really struggling to handle it. I tried this tweak but it didn't help...
Quicktime won't open it without a plugin. Any suggestions about what I should be watching it with? |
07:02pm 11/12/10 Permalink
you could always convert it to mp4 since its already h264 encoced with http://code.google.com/p/subler/
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07:12pm 11/12/10 Permalink
converting media to any format is fail
surely osx being the most awesome os in the world would have something that can play mkvs? else, install windows and use wmp |
07:15pm 11/12/10 Permalink
08:02pm 11/12/10 Permalink
http://www.perian.org/ will give you the codec you need for Quicktime
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08:16pm 11/12/10 Permalink
if you've got a macbook pro, try switching to the high performance video chipset instead of the power saving one if you haven't already. Also laptop hard drives tend to suck speed wise, are you sure it's up to the task of streaming a file that large?
My huge PC has trouble with some really large files, HDD light is on constantly. Mind you, they're uncompressed AVI files and an 8 second video I have is 1.15gig so I can't imagine how huge a full movie would be ahha. e: It might not be your mac, I just tried VLC vs MPC on my PC, VLC uses a lot more CPU to play the same video, double the usage if not more. last edited by Whoop at 21:36:43 11/Dec/10 |
09:23pm 11/12/10 Permalink
You got the latest version of vlc? after v1.0 or something it uses hardware acceleration.
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10:04pm 11/12/10 Permalink
I say give this a go: http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/
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04:39am 12/12/10 Permalink
VLC is flawless for me after doing this:
* Go to VLC's preferences Else use Plex. |
06:14am 12/12/10 Permalink
Im getting a 2.8Ghz, 8gig ram with a 256gig SSD MBP next week, I can't wait to push something like an 11gig hd vid through it
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09:59am 12/12/10 Permalink
^^ You don't need particularly dazzling specs just to play 1080p MKV files. My old AMD Athlon from nearly 5 years ago could do it.
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10:15am 12/12/10 Permalink
Well I copied it over to my SSD and it plays fine... so maybe it was an HDD speed issue.
Im getting a 2.8Ghz, 8gig ram with a 256gig SSD MBP next week, I can't wait to push something like an 11gig hd vid through it I just upgraded my MBP to 8 gig ram, 240gig solid state, and replaced the optical drive for a 1TB second drive :) |
10:27am 12/12/10 Permalink
OIC, it wasn't the HDD speed - it plays fine of either drive. Must have been because I didn't realise I was backing up to Time Machine and copying ~20gig of media across the network. Woops :)
But thanks, team. I'm going to try out plex. |
10:30am 12/12/10 Permalink
backing up to Time Machine and copying ~20gig of media across the network. Woops :) NOOOOOOOOB |
07:01pm 12/12/10 Permalink
OIC, it wasn't the HDD speed - it plays fine of either drive. Must have been because I didn't realise I was backing up to Time Machine and copying ~20gig of media across the network. Woops :) lol. I was going to say, I can play a 14gig mkv over wireless and it's still fine, so HDD speed would be strange. |
10:44pm 12/12/10 Permalink
time machine pretty much cripples my macbook, there's nothing much on it worth saving anyway so I disabled it.
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12:19am 13/12/10 Permalink
I think it's just usb more than anything. With a firewire drive I hardly notice it.
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12:45am 13/12/10 Permalink
I think it's just usb more than anything. With a firewire drive I hardly notice it. I was backing up from my SSD to my 2nd internal drive, and it chugged the s*** out of everything. |
08:47am 13/12/10 Permalink
lol. I was going to say, I can play a 14gig mkv over wireless and it's still fine, so HDD speed would be strange. Realy?? your not transcoding it or something before playing it over the network. I find it very hard to believe a 14gb MKV runs fine over wireless. |
08:49am 13/12/10 Permalink
why? wireless-N (all modern macs have 802.11n) can do 150mbps, at 14gb and lets say 2 hours (7200 seconds) it's only 1.94MB/sec = 15mbit roughly Thats all theoretical though. Wireless is s*** and slow, even wireless N. I cant stream 5gb MKV's over 100mb lan, but Gigabit is fine. |
09:09am 13/12/10 Permalink
Well as a reference I get about anywhere from 6-10mb/s copying across the network (8ish 90% of the time). So like teq said it's really no worries.
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09:19am 13/12/10 Permalink
Well there's something wrong with your network. Straight Blu-Ray images are a maximum of 40Mbit, which handles just fine over 100Mbit ethernet. I've streamed plenty of 4GB MKV files over 54Mbit wifi without a hitch. I've only had 100Mbit ethernet stutter when my PC is transcoding on the fly, which doesn't really compress the data very much. If it's just a straight MKV file though, it should run fine.
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09:29am 13/12/10 Permalink
