[Frumpy]

I was interested in a new online show called systm, but the best feed was only in h.264. No problem, i think. I'll just go download the newest version of QT, get the pro key to save videos, and i'm all set. So, I venture to Apple's site, and see the system requirements for viewing the VERY cool 720p movie trailers on Apple's movie trailer site. I "need" a 1.8 GHz G5 or faster?! So you're saying that one of the coolest features of QT 7, watching hi-def videos, isn't even possible on my 1.33 GHz PB?! Has anyone actually tried to watch those 720p trailers in QT 7 on anything slower than a 1.8 G5?! This completely outdates even the most recent PB line, and mine is just a year old this month! Just to watch a VIDEO?! So i'm paying $30 for a pro version of an app that I can't even use half the features of?! Can someone please explain the logic behind this? (sorry for the ranting, just really need some answers).

[f1000]

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=254132

[darwin23]

Originally Posted by Frumpy

I was interested in a new online show called systm, but the best feed was only in h.264. No problem, i think. I'll just go download the newest version of QT, get the pro key to save videos, and i'm all set. So, I venture to Apple's site, and see the system requirements for viewing the VERY cool 720p movie trailers on Apple's movie trailer site. I "need" a 1.8 GHz G5 or faster?! So you're saying that one of the coolest features of QT 7, watching hi-def videos, isn't even possible on my 1.33 GHz PB?! Has anyone actually tried to watch those 720p trailers in QT 7 on anything slower than a 1.8 G5?! This completely outdates even the most recent PB line, and mine is just a year old this month! Just to watch a VIDEO?! So i'm paying $30 for a pro version of an app that I can't even use half the features of?! Can someone please explain the logic behind this? (sorry for the ranting, just really need some answers).

h.264 is a very complex codec, the software based decoding used in QT 7 has a very high CPU overhead.

No PowerBook can play it back without frame loss as things stand now.

Apple can sell more G5's if the HD h.264 gets to be a buzz with buyers.

I see your point and I agree, h.264 has been coming down the pipe for some time now, Apple should have found a way to get Full PlayBack of HD on High END Mac's.

But, other than these teasers h.264 content is very limited. It should go main stream when HD-DVD titles go on sale in July (I think).

Around this same time Conexant is set to deploy it Hardware Decoder Chip for h.264.

So, you have PMICA, USB2, and FW. Each of these ports should be able to handle the Bandwidth needed to use a Hardware Based Decoder.

If h.264 HD is all the buzz, Apple "may" offer us a Decoder Hardware device, for say $129.99.

The Conexant Chip is $20 if you buy 10k of them, so that's $200,000. Not too much money for a small 3rd party Hardware Co. to offer a device in the $250 range, however they will need to get Apple to "Support" it in DVDPlayer.app or write their own DVD Player.

CPU overhead should be less than 400Mhz for 1080i h.264, with the PPC acting as the coprocessor to the Conexant chip.

Also, the device should be very small and bus powered. Maybe a bit larger than a USB Wi-Fi adapter. PMICA would be better for the PowerBook, however USB/FW devices would have a larger market. Both would be best.

Lastly, Apple did not have much choice here, the PPC G4 is limiting the PowerBook, yet they must sell what they can build.

Ati and NVidia have not offered Hardware Decoding on the GPU for HD h.264, yet! ATI should have something by Q1 next year or before.

No news from NV, yet.

The software got done before the hardware, Apple wants to get h.264 HD to be all the buzz and SELL you everything you need.

Hope this helped clear things up, MPEG2 was the same deal back when. Only the names have changed.

Now all you need is a Dual Format HD-DVD/Blu-Ray slot-loading Drive for your PowerBook.

[nuggetman]

perhaps the question is why did you think you need to buy pro? the h.264 file isn't streaming, it's a download

[TypeMRT]

The systm played fine on my 15" Albook (1 Ghz + 768 RAM).

[Frumpy]

I might have made this a bit more confusing than i intended. Systm does play fine on my PB. I'm upset that one of the coolest new features of QT 7, playing high-def videos, isn't suppported under my supposedly "pro" laptop. I feel like I've already been outdated, and being a big supporter and life-long customer of Apple, this is something completely new for me. I've always stuck with iBook's or iMac's. So I finally move up and purchase a PB, and within it's first year I can't even use a major feature in the new QT. I've already got QT 6 Pro, and I download a lot of videos from ign, seeing as how i'm an assisant manager for GameStop. I was just disappointed that I would have to pay $30 again for QT 7 Pro, just so that I could continue to download videos to my hard drive and play h.264 files. One tiny little feature (h.264), which only has one use for me (watching systm), just doesn't seem worth it to me. I guess I'll have to keep watching it in Windows Media Player. Ugh.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by darwin23

...
round this same time Conexant is set to deploy it Hardware Decoder Chip for h.264.

So, you have PMICA, USB2, and FW. Each of these ports should be able to handle the Bandwidth needed to use a Hardware Based Decoder...

By PMICA I assume you were trying to say "PCMCIA", which is the old standard -- it is now called PC Card. But anyway, 12" PowerBooks don't even have PC Card slots, so it wouldn't work. But yes, USB2 or FW would work, but not uncompressed. The chip would have to be able to transcode the H.264 to something like HVD or MPEG2.

tooki

[darwin23]

Yes, PCMCIA. Doe!

I forgot that 12" PB's don't have it.

Care to explain why USB2 or FW can't handle HD without Trancoding? I'm not disagreeing but would like for you to spell it out.

Those of you that say your PowerBook is playing 720p h.264 stream need to look at how many FPS your getting. 14 or 15 MAX.

[Evinyatar]

Originally Posted by darwin23

Care to explain why USB2 or FW can't handle HD without Trancoding? I'm not disagreeing but would like for you to spell it out.

Well, the trailers on Apple's site are at a resolution of 1280 x 544 pixels, at 24fps. That means 16.711.680 pixels that have to be transferred over the FireWire link per second. Lets just say we use 24 bits for each pixel (assuming we're using RGB at millions of colours). That gives us a stream of about 401 Mbit/second. Add to that the outgoing stream of H.264 at about 6 MBit/second, and you have already exceeded the theoretical 400 Mbps limit of FireWire. That's without the protocol overhead (not sure how much that is for FW).
And that's just the 720p trailers. The 1080p trailers would require 902 Mbps uncompressed, which is well beyond even the capabilities of FireWire 800.

[rm199]

What sort of compression does DV give - I remember the Formac tv capture box used DV to cram its output down the firewire port. Either way it will be one powerful box that can transcode 1080 H264 to DV in realtime!!

[Big Mac]

I don't know if it's a good idea for anyone to get their hopes up that Apple will ever support hardware decoding of H.264, based primarily on the fact that Apple eschewed DVD (standard-def) hardware decoding. And I also highly doubt that any hardware decoding solution would possibly be provided by way of external bus like Firewire or USB.

[:XI:]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

I don't know if it's a good idea for anyone to get their hopes up that Apple will ever support hardware decoding of H.264, based primarily on the fact that Apple eschewed DVD (standard-def) hardware decoding. And I also highly doubt that any hardware decoding solution would possibly be provided by way of external bus like Firewire or USB.

Early G3 towers and G3 Powerbooks (well, once they got DVD-ROM drives that is.) had hardware dvd decoding.

Powermac DVD-Decoder card & Powerbook DVD-VIDEO PC CARD.

[rm199]

Comments from the Computex press are very positive regarding the H264 hardware acceleration on show by ATI. Apparently when disabled the CPU monitor shows 95% and when R520 based H264 acceleration is enabled the CPU drops to 33%.

Nice. They also mentioned that ATI will try and bring _some_ of the technology to older cards (but they seem to be confirming that the R520 has dedicated H264 decoding hardware inside so it shouldn't be anywhere near as good on existing hardware).

Shame we'll have to wait eons for the card and drivers to make it to the mac

[darwin23]

Originally Posted by Evinyatar

Well, the trailers on Apple's site are at a resolution of 1280 x 544 pixels, at 24fps. That means 16.711.680 pixels that have to be transferred over the FireWire link per second. Lets just say we use 24 bits for each pixel (assuming we're using RGB at millions of colours). That gives us a stream of about 401 Mbit/second. Add to that the outgoing stream of H.264 at about 6 MBit/second, and you have already exceeded the theoretical 400 Mbps limit of FireWire. That's without the protocol overhead (not sure how much that is for FW).
And that's just the 720p trailers. The 1080p trailers would require 902 Mbps uncompressed, which is well beyond even the capabilities of FireWire 800.

Thanks, I had not thought of the Stream going to the Video card as being so large, you are correct.

The type of HardWare decoding I was thinking of would not be posable over FW400 and USB2's Bandwidth would be Maxed out on 720P no chance of 1080i unless the HW Decoder used re-compression or scaled to 720P, however all would have to be scaled on most PB ibook displays.

One other Port on the 12" and iBook maybe able to handle the Bandwidth, you'd lose your AE card.

While still plausible, I now don't think we'll see any HW Decoder for HD on PB, seem I've been talking out my bung.

It would take some very tight code to get 720P over USB2 and all the CPU/Bus/PCI Bus/USB Chip/RAM/SW/AGP overhead may make the playback choppy.

It was a nice pipe dream.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by darwin23

It would take some very tight code to get 720P over USB2 and all the CPU/Bus/PCI Bus/USB Chip/RAM/SW/AGP overhead may make the playback choppy.

You'd never get it working on USB2. The data rates on USB2 aren't stable enough. Firewire is much better suited for video because it has stable transfer rates.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

I don't know if it's a good idea for anyone to get their hopes up that Apple will ever support hardware decoding of H.264, based primarily on the fact that Apple eschewed DVD (standard-def) hardware decoding.

Huh?

Apple already supports hardware DVD decode assist on GPUs. And hardware H.264 decode assist has already been announced for ATI's next generation GPUs (to come out this year). Given H.264's hefty CPU requirements, I'd be very surprised if Apple *didn't* make use of hardware H.264 decode assist.

The reason Apple didn't use full dedicated non-GPU hardware decoding is because it's a waste of time and money for general purpose machines, when GPU assist is good enough.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by darwin23

Yes, PCMCIA. Doe!

I forgot that 12" PB's don't have it.

Care to explain why USB2 or FW can't handle HD without Trancoding? I'm not disagreeing but would like for you to spell it out.

No, not PCMCIA. PC Card!

Uncompressed HD requires far more bandwidth than FW or USB 2 can handle. (E.g. almost 1.5Gbps for 1080p at 24fps.) That means that it must be compressed to be transferred. Converting from one compression to another is called transcoding. In this case, you'd be transcoding from a more-compact, but more CPU-intensive codec (h.264) to something less-compact, but less CPU-intensive (such as HVD).

tooki

[tooki]

Originally Posted by :XI:

Early G3 towers and G3 Powerbooks (well, once they got DVD-ROM drives that is.) had hardware dvd decoding.

Powermac DVD-Decoder card & Powerbook DVD-VIDEO PC CARD.

Note that only DVD Player 1.0–1.3 used the hardware decoders. Under Mac OS X, even those models do not require the hardware DVD decoders. (I have tried this, unplugging the decoder and seeing Mac OS X not tell the difference.)

tooki

[darwin23]

Originally Posted by tooki

No, not PCMCIA. PC Card!

Uncompressed HD requires far more bandwidth than FW or USB 2 can handle. (E.g. almost 1.5Gbps for 1080p at 24fps.) That means that it must be compressed to be transferred. Converting from one compression to another is called transcoding. In this case, you'd be transcoding from a more-compact, but more CPU-intensive codec (h.264) to something less-compact, but less CPU-intensive (such as HVD).

tooki

I would think if the device were to do TransCoding it would be best to do YUV or MPEG2.

Not sure on the data rate for YUV.

MPEG2 would be better if the GPU could decode 720p. Remember are talking PowerBook here so it's going to get scaled anyway.

I think on the NV side everything from the 5200FX and up can do HW MPEG2 decoding @ 720p.

Not sure on the ATI side.

Now, it becomes a question of how much quality loss you'd see from the transcoding.

But, with a Real-time h.264 decoder and a Real-time Mpeg2 Encoder this device would just cost too much and be too large for PB owner to buy in mass.

Upcoming ATI GPU's are irrelevant as you can not upgrade the GPU in a PowerBook.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by tooki

Note that only DVD Player 1.0–1.3 used the hardware decoders. Under Mac OS X, even those models do not require the hardware DVD decoders. (I have tried this, unplugging the decoder and seeing Mac OS X not tell the difference.)

tooki

Which means, correct me if I'm wrong, that there is no hardware DVD decoding in OS X at all. And that was my point with which EW disagreed.

[olePigeon]

Have you tried running the trailer? They run just fine on my 1.67 PowerBook.

By the way, here's an easy way to understand how complex the compression is:

I made a little movie 720x480 resolution with 32-bit color at 30fps, approximately 35 seconds long. Uncompressed it was 65MBs. Using normal MPEG-4 (H.263?,) it dropped it to just under 9MBs and gradients got banding and the colors went flat. Using the new H.264 codec, it dropped it down to 1.8MBs, gradients were smooth, and the picture quality was MUCH better than the previous MPEG-4 comrpression.

So not only was it 4x smaller than the previous MPEG-4 compression, but the picture quality was superb compared to it.

That's pretty impressive (which is why I think it's funny that people seem to think they need 300GBs of space for an HD-DVD. )

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Which means, correct me if I'm wrong, that there is no hardware DVD decoding in OS X at all. And that was my point with which EW disagreed.

External dedicated hardware decoders are not the same things as GPUs, but GPUs support hardware decode (to varying extents).

Mac OS X supports acceleration of DVD (and QuickTime) movie playback using the hardware decode functionality built into the GPUs.

The same will likely be true for H.264, once a few GPUs with H.264 assist support show up in Macs. (Currently there are none.)

I really see no point in Apple supporting standalone hardware H.264 decoders in the OS however.

Originally Posted by olePigeon

Have you tried running the trailer? They run just fine on my 1.67 PowerBook.

1) Have you checked your frame rates? The 1.67 is marginal. A lot of people have glitches with certain material from time to time.
2) Have you tried the NASA clip?

[darwin23]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

External dedicated hardware decoders are not the same things as GPUs, but GPUs support hardware decode (to varying extents).

Mac OS X supports acceleration of DVD (and QuickTime) movie playback using the hardware decode functionality built into the GPUs.

The same will likely be true for H.264, once a few GPUs with H.264 assist support show up in Macs. (Currently there are none.)

I really see no point in Apple supporting standalone hardware H.264 decoders in the OS however.


1) Have you checked your frame rates? The 1.67 is marginal. A lot of people have glitches with certain material from time to time.
2) Have you tried the NASA clip?

The point would be a stop-gap for PowerBook's until ATI or NV can offer h.264 support on GPU.

Apple is selling PowerBooks NOW that will NEVER support DVD-HD/Blu-Ray h.264 DVD VIDEO.

Go and get a 17" PB and come back in 6 months and tell me you don't see the point.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by darwin23

The point would be a stop-gap for PowerBook's until ATI or NV can offer h.264 support on GPU.

Apple is selling PowerBooks NOW that will NEVER support DVD-HD/Blu-Ray h.264 DVD VIDEO.

Go and get a 17" PB and come back in 6 months and tell me you don't see the point.

I will buy a new PowerBook this year. And no I don't see the point of Apple adding support for H.264 decode acceleration on outboard decoders to DVDPlayer.

For the next while, commercial H.264 HD-DVD will be non-existent, and it's not as if the internal drives in our machines will ever play Blu-Ray. DVDs will continue to work fine when I travel. And when I travel you can rest assured I won't be carrying around an external outboard Blu-Ray player with H.264 decoder. Not that the H.264 part matters anyway, since I betcha lots of the disks will be MPEG2.

Now, if you still want to buy an external Firewire hardware decoder or whatever, you're still free to install the manufacturer's software. There's no need for Apple to waste their time in adding it to DVDPlayer.app. If they do eventually add it, consider it a bonus, because I certainly wouldn't expect them to do it. The only hardware acceleration I expect them to add to DVDPlayer.app is for the GPUs in future Macs.

[darwin23]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

I will buy a new PowerBook this year. And no I don't see the point of Apple adding support for H.264 decode acceleration on outboard decoders to DVDPlayer.

For the next while, commercial H.264 HD-DVD will be non-existent, and it's not as if the internal drives in our machines will ever play Blu-Ray. DVDs will continue to work fine when I travel. And when I travel you can rest assured I won't be carrying around an external outboard Blu-Ray player with H.264 decoder. Not that the H.264 part matters anyway, since I betcha lots of the disks will be MPEG2.

Now, if you still want to buy an external Firewire hardware decoder or whatever, you're still free to install the manufacturer's software. There's no need for Apple to waste their time in adding it to DVDPlayer.app. If they do eventually add it, consider it a bonus, because I certainly wouldn't expect them to do it. The only hardware acceleration I expect them to add to DVDPlayer.app is for the GPUs in future Macs.

Several companies announced plans to release HD DVD hardware and content by the end of 2005. Toshiba told attendees that it would begin delivering HD DVD players and notebook PCs with HD DVD drives in the fourth quarter of this year. NEC announced that it would deliver HD DVD ROM drives in September 2005. SANYO also announced that it would deliver HD DVD players in Q4 2005. The event was highlighted by an HD DVD demonstration featuring a montage of theatrical HD DVD titles expected to be released from major Hollywood studios.

An abbreviated list of Universal Pictures films includes:

Van Helsing
The Bourne Supremacy
The Chronicles of Riddick
Apollo 13
U-571
12 Monkeys
Dune
The Thing
End of Days
Backdraft
Waterworld
The Bone Collector
Spy Game
Pitch Black
Conan the Barbarian
Dante's Peak
An abbreviated list of Warner Home Video includes:

Batman Begins
Constantine
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Ocean’s Twelve
The Polar Express
The Phantom of the Opera
Matrix (the trilogy)
Harry Potter movies
An abbreviated list of Paramount Home Entertainment includes:

Braveheart
Forest Gump
The Manchurian Candidate
Elizabethtown
Spongebob Squarepants (thank goodness for this one!)
Italian Job
School of Rock
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Ghost
Grease

[rm199]

Indeed at the start of the year when the announcements were made there were over 120 titles lined up from the various studios. They all said Q3/Q4 2005.

Nothing stopping them delaying the launch though... hoping they don't though as I stopped buying any DVDs on the list!

[goMac]

Originally Posted by darwin23

Apple is selling PowerBooks NOW that will NEVER support DVD-HD/Blu-Ray h.264 DVD VIDEO.

Huh. Let's see here, my Powerbook didn't come with a DVD-HD drive or a Blu-Ray drive. Should I therefore be surprised my GPU doesn't support it?

[darwin23]

Originally Posted by goMac

Huh. Let's see here, my Powerbook didn't come with a DVD-HD drive or a Blu-Ray drive. Should I therefore be surprised my GPU doesn't support it?

On the one hand Apple is pimping h.264( as far as I know DVDPlayer is the ONLY HiDef DVD PLAYER YOU CAN GET)

On the other hand Apple is selling a PRO line of PowerBooks that Can't playback HD h.264 without frame loss.

You can buy a new removable media drive for a PowerBook.

Get your head out of the sand Before you post.

[power142]

Apple might be pimping H.264 with one hand hidden, but I can't find anywhere that states the clips will play back smoothly at HD resolutions with anything less than a 1.8GHz G5, and this includes all current PowerBooks (that you might say they are pimping with the other).

I suspect that by the end of the year, we'll have some kind of souped up PowerBook with the ability to do it, either by processor brute force (7448 or 970) or with hardware assistance from ATI. These would also, obviously, need a drive capable of reading the disks. This doesn't sound too unreasonable - for all intents and purposes, some people have reported almost smooth playback of 720p clips on the 1.67 G4, bus limitations (warts) and all.....

[Eug Wanker]

An abbreviated list of Warner Home Video includes:

Batman Begins
Constantine
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Ocean’s Twelve
The Polar Express
The Phantom of the Opera
Matrix (the trilogy)
Harry Potter movies

I hope you realize that Warner will be using Windows Media VC-1.

The other ones we don't know which encoding method yet, but it seems they'll be the high-capacity HD-DVD discs, likely with MPEG2. However, even if it was H.264, our optical drives don't support those high-capacity HD-DVD discs.

You can buy a new removable media drive for a PowerBook.

You can, but it won't play either Blu-Ray or the high-capacity HD-DVD, because the drives don't exist. The only HD movies it will play will be HD H.264 on standard DVD media. And it seems those won't exist any time soon commercially either.

[darwin23]

I seem to be defending this ground alone.

We're beating a dead horse, I've already admitted I was "talking out my bung" and "It was a nice pipe dream".

I even covered the need for a drive in my first post.

I was not aware the WM-VC-1 was part of the Hi-Def DVD standard could you provide a link?