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wilsonng · Oct 21, 2005, 09:39 AM

does anybody know if the Mac Mini can play a QuickTime h.264 move in full-screen with frame choppiness. i was just wondering if the 32 MB VRAM and the cpu speed of the Mac Mini can handle playing back h.264 with stuttering frame rates.

I'd love to get a Mac Mini to play Quicktime movies and be happy to know it can do the job without any worries.

Thanks.

JonoG4 · Oct 21, 2005, 10:15 AM

H.264 is a very processor intensive codec, and in my experience, anything with a resolution greater than 480p will not play back smoothly on a Mac mini. But for everything else H.264 plays fine. All of Apple's 480p trailers play with no dropped frames.

wilsonng · Oct 22, 2005, 02:41 AM

Hmmm..... Interesting..... Thanks for your answer.

I guess I'm just gonna stick with mp4 videoss for a while. The introduction of the iPod video got me curious about h.264 though.

At this moment, I don't think I'm too interested in h.264 unless Apple puts a specialized chips in their Macs that are specifically used for h.264 encode/playback.

I remembered a long time ago when some of the Black PowerBooks had DVD decoder hardware built-in to the motherboard.

Maybe the 1.5GHz Mac Mini's 64MB VRAM would help playback of H.264? I'd be interested in that answer.

Eug Wanker · Oct 22, 2005, 08:50 AM

What are you interested in? Like JonoG4 said, 480p (720x480) H.264 material should play back just fine on the Mac mini. If you're talking HD, that's another kettle of fish, but my guess is no.

The main problem with even 480p H.264 on modern Macs is the encoding. It takes forever, even on my 2.0 GHz iMac. However, the video quality is absolute gorgeous for the bitrates. When you're at low bitrates you'll get better stuff out of Apple's QT H.264 encoder than any mp4 encoder out there.

wilsonng · Oct 22, 2005, 09:21 AM

720x480 was what I was looking for. Not thinking HD at all.

Thanks for clarifying about H.264 and low bit-rates. At the moment, the outrageous encode times for H.264 are out of my league...... Maybe if I had something like the University of Virginia superclusters of XServes......

power142 · Oct 22, 2005, 10:21 AM

It may be small consolation, but even on a dual G5 machine H.264 takes some significant time to encode. MPEG-4 videos take much less time to encode, and you can still get great results - especially if you use a third-party app such as ffmpegx instead of exporting as MPEG-4 in Quicktime. The bit rates don't have to be astronomically high either, but like others have said, it depends on what you want to do with it.

osxrules · Oct 22, 2005, 06:37 PM

I use H264 for encoding small clips on My Mac Mini but it takes ages. If I was encoding regularly, I'd use DivX or Xvid. I hope they get the speed up higher. I've heard that some other H264 codecs like Nero doesn't take as long as Apple's. I was so disappointed with the performance because it is an amazing codec. It's totally unusable for me for anything more than small clips.

I find only 480p plays well for me too but it looks great so I don't know why the higher resolutions are needed. 480p looks the same or better than a DVD and I never complained about that quality before.

Camali · Oct 22, 2005, 07:06 PM

I'm just little curious but how can I encode (should I choose to do so) in H.264?

wilsonng · Oct 22, 2005, 09:34 PM

Is DivX another mpeg-4 variation or would I still need a QT codec to play DivX encoded movies?

I was interested in DivX because DivX encoding is supposed to be found in Toast 7 but I didn't know if it was mpeg-4 compliant.

osxrules · Oct 23, 2005, 09:17 AM

Originally Posted by Camali

I'm just little curious but how can I encode (should I choose to do so) in H.264?

If you want to do it via Quicktime, you need to get the pro version. However, since Apple has made the developer libraries available for everyone, people have made 3rd party tools that let you do it for free.

I use Quicktime Pro because it is a nice app and has good editing features.

Originally Posted by wilsonng

Is DivX another mpeg-4 variation or would I still need a QT codec to play DivX encoded movies

Yes, DivX is another mpeg-4 variant. It is one of the most popular and is supported in some commercial DVD Players. It's not officially supported though whereas H264 is.

But yes you do need a QT component to play or encode DivX content. You can get it from divx.com - it says it doesn't support Tiger but it works for me. I don't like DivX because the developers are slow to update the Mac version.

Mullet · Oct 23, 2005, 12:13 PM

I was under the impression that h.264 is Mpeg4. h.264 is just a codec. Mpeg4 is the wrapper. Another name for h.264 is Mpeg4 part 10.

Just wanted to clarify that a lil bit.

~Mullet

wilsonng · 07:55 PM

So if I can't play DivX in QT Player without the DivX codec, then I'm guessing DivX-encoded mp4s will not play in the iPod.

This would mean that DivX does not make mpeg-4 compliant video and is truly an mpeg-4 variant.

Is the DivX release in Toast Titanium 7 the newest version of DivX or is it just an old version bundled up?

Eug Wanker · Oct 23, 2005, 09:42 PM

DivX 6 is in Titanium 7.

DivX files will not play in the iPod, but that doesn't mean it's not MPEG4. However Apple has chosen not to support it. I don't blame them. There is absolutely no reason for Apple to actively support DivX. DivX 6 (and previous version too) do work with QuickTime though, if you install the plug-in.