Very bad MPEG-4 AVC playback... fixes?

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pxc

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So I get to play this weekend with a Mac Pro with a 2600XT video card, 4GB and one CPU installed (2.8GHz). Since I just disassembled my HTPC, I figured that I would try using Front Row in 10.5.3 as a substitute and if that worked maybe I would just connect my own Mac to the HDTV and use it.

I connected up the Mac Pro to my HDTV, the OS recognized the LCD and defaulted to 1300-something x 768 and I changed it to the native resolution (1920x1080/60p). FR is very slick and I like it a lot as a front end.

The problem is that the h.264 videos I made from DVDs (using Nero Recode, which has a licensed h.264 encoder) play back very badly under Front Row and Quicktime. The speed of the system should be way more than enough since the same videos play back smoothly on my junky 1.43GHz laptop with Intel X3100 video. I have encoded other videos in MPEG-4 AVC in lower resolutions with Nero Recode and those play back fine in Quicktime. Are there any tweaks to make h.264 playback better? I'm hoping the solution isn't to turn down the resolution back to somewhere around 720p because that's lame. ;)
 
Might Try a different player? VLC Media Player Maybe
 
FrontRow is next to useless with the newest codecs out today, i dropped it a long time ago and have never looked back, and my Mac is a fulltime HTPC.

The ONLY media player Mac users should be using is XBMC.

Plays anything and everything beautifully with little to no CPU usage. Even high bitrate 1080p x264 MKV's on a 2.0GHz MacMini.

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I'm not a movie torrent monkey. I don't need support for many codecs since I'm just encoding these myself from DVDs. All I need is support for what I thought would be pretty standard, h.264/MPEG-4 AVC. Nothing special, just encoded @ ~1.6Mbps bitrate.

This site has a newer version: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/34209

There's no harm in trying so I'll give this a shot. If it doesn't have a full screen mode, can't do basic/low CPU utilization video quality enhacement or it lives up to its immature version number, again it's pretty pointless to me no matter how 1337 it seems to be.

edit: nevermind on the "problem." It seems to be ATI related. I just tried the same movie on my Intel dual core Mac with nvidia video and it plays back perfectly with no tweaks required. I'll test if the video quality is acceptable on the 42" screen later.
 
Ok, dont flatter yourself. I did you a favor. For the people who have been using XBMC since the first available builds (like me) all agree, nothing else compares. And im pretty sure the newest version is available on the site of the guy coding it (go to the main page). Take a look at the comments for every post he has, you will find nothing but praise from devoted fans. Even works with you're apple remote. Fullscreen? Yea.. its a media center app, wouldnt make sense for it not to. As for the version number, i have been using it as my Main media center app for a LONG time, more or less the first release... never had any issues.

My CoreDuo (not C2D) Mac Mini is a dedicated media center PC that runs XBMC exclusively. As i mentioned earlier, it plays 1080p x264 material (the most CPU intensive) fine, so you're MBP will do great.

Elan is very friendly and will answer any question you have in the new Forums he put on his site. Even sometimes responds to requests for XBMC personally.

You call it 1337 or whatever, i call a media center that works. 99% of the people who use it are not the immature 1337 script kiddies you apparently are assuming they are. Good luck.
 
Ok, dont flatter yourself.
Flatter? I don't see how that applies. I was just stating that I have pretty narrow requirements. Anyways I updated my post above since I narrowed down the problem to the ATI video.

The Mac Pro isn't mine anyways and I'm giving it back tomorrow. FR will probably work fine on my own system, as long as video quality gets some enhancement. If not, i'll just rebuild my HTPC/TV gaming PC with Windows anyways.

edit: This morning I tested the same h.264 video on a MacBook with X3100 video and it also played back smoothly with no tweaks.

The Mac Pro with the playback problems had all updates installed. Are there other places to get ATI driver updates for the Mac?
 
I'd say see how VLC player handles it for troubleshooting's sake. It seems like there's a high chance it won't be able to either.
 
I'd say see how VLC player handles it for troubleshooting's sake. It seems like there's a high chance it won't be able to either.
VLC played back the video best, but it still was not smooth like on the 2 other Macs I tried it on. It's no big deal like I mentioned above. The Mac Pro is gone now and i'll just keep the ATI playback problems in mind and look out for a fix before I would buy one.

I also tried the current beta of XBMC and it was pretty much what I expected (not a compliment). I don't know how long that port has been underway, but it has a while to go. It's very rough around the edges and it had the worst video quality of all the playback tests I tried. The reliance on both the keyboard and mouse were also unusable for me.

I won't have time until this weekend to play around with this again. I'll probably go with MCE or Vista since I have extra licences for each.
 
Hmm, Its strange that you have those results as ffmpeg (what XBMC is based around) is regarded by many to be the highest quality codec for h264 there is... People have been using (XBMC) for a long time no with absolutely no complaints. Myself included.

And the apple remote works beautifully for me, surprised it didn't for you.
 
Hmm, Its strange that you have those results as ffmpeg (what XBMC is based around) is regarded by many to be the highest quality codec for h264 there is...
I don't know who regards it as best, because it's not. Maybe the best "free" codec, but there's not much competition. :p

I wasn't 1337 enough to download other programs to get the remote to work.
 
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