[keith p]

Hi,

I'm a recent cross over from PC. I got a Mac mini to make life easy

My setup consists of a Mini Core Duo 1.66 (1.25gb ram), 380gb NAS, 42" LCD (720P), and 100Mb router.

We also have G4 (MDD) on a 20" in the bedroom.

I use my home computers mostly as HTPC and web surfing.

My research showed that the Mini should be capable of 720P video. The plan was to store video on the NAS. I'm aware that the G4 is not fast enough for HD video, so I also own an Avel Link HD Network media player.

The mini is having playback issues. It stumbles on H.264 720P video in VLC (even from the internal HD) and sometimes stumbles on divx/xvid encoded files from the nas.

My first thought was upgrade the processor. Now I'm thinking it may be drive related. Should I upgrade my router to a GB router? Should I upgrade the internal drive? Will a firewire drive be quick enough?

I wish I had more Mac knowledge. I don’t even know how to perform performance tests to identify the problem.

Thanks for helping a Noob like me,
Keith

[mduell]

1.66Ghz Core Duo should be fine for 720p H.264... my 1.86Ghz Pentium M (basically half a Core Duo) plays 720p H.264 trailers just fine.
100Mbps is more than enough for compressed 720p.

Strange issue you've got there.

[keith p]

Tell me about it. I was totally heart broken when I tried to play my first HD video and it dropped frames. It glitches every 3-4 seconds..

Where should I start looking to try to find the bottle neck??


EDIT:
I did some poking around. It seems quick time does a good job but has a loud audio digital noise every few seconds.. I went back to VLC. VLC says 0 video lost buffers, but it was adding adio lost buffers every time it glitches.

I've never heard of audio issues Any hints??

[mduell]

Sounds like a bad input file. Can you play the HD trailers from apple.com/trailers?

[keith p]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Sounds like a bad input file. Can you play the HD trailers from apple.com/trailers?

Yes, the HD trailers are beautiful and play perfectly.

I made some progress.
H.264 files play perfect from QuickTime using Perian codec. If I let the file FULLY load (the time bar on the bottom is all grey) the files play perfectly. If I start the file prematurely, it glitches..

Any hints? The last file I loaded took almost 12 minutes to “pre-load” before I could play it…

Edit: The files are MKV, posibly X264. If that makes a difference...

[mduell]

Oh, yea, Quicktime+Perian blows chunks for MKV (and to some extent 264). Use vlc or mplayer.

[keith p]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Oh, yea, Quicktime+Perian blows chunks for MKV (and to some extent 264). Use vlc or mplayer.

If you read above, I can not get it to play smoothly with VLC at all.

I will try Mplayer tonight.

Any one now how I can find the bottle neck? I have no problem upgrading if need be. I don't know what component needs the attention tho.

[mduell]

The hardware is fine for what you're trying to do. It's a software problem with immature mkv support. You could use a different container.

[keith p]

Originally Posted by mduell 

It's a software problem with immature mkv support

I'll just "pre-load" the files with quicktime and wait for better software to become available. It's better than nothing...

Thanks everyone.