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[MAC] New Thunderbolt Mac Mini!
ix400 Wrote:I just ordered the ATI i5 Mac Mini. I hope I won't regret it.

Chris

Okay I received the new Mini.

After installing XBMC I almost immediately realized that a very old problem is still present (I already know it from my 2010 Mini): XBMC crashes when a 1080i H.264 file is played while hardware acceleration is turned on. You can hear the sound for a couple of seconds, but with no video. Then it crashes.

Here's the log:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7782292/xbmc.log

Sorry, I don't want to be rude, but I can't really understand all the Eden hype if even such basic things do not work properly. Sorry but I'm a bit disappointed.

Chris
unRAID Server, Pioneer VSX-LX52, Panasonic 65VT30, Marusys VU+ Duo, Zotac AD10
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ix400 Wrote:Okay I received the new Mini.

After installing XBMC I almost immediately realized that a very old problem is still present (I already know it from my 2010 Mini): XBMC crashes when a 1080i H.264 file is played while hardware acceleration is turned on. You can hear the sound for a couple of seconds, but with no video. Then it crashes.

Here's the log:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7782292/xbmc.log

Sorry, I don't want to be rude, but I can't really understand all the Eden hype if even such basic things do not work properly. Sorry but I'm a bit disappointed.

Chris

Until a few years ago we couldn't do any hardware decoding on Mac OS X because Apple wouldn't open up the API. Even now the API is still mostly closed. I believe (but I do not know for sure) that this is the problem with interlaced content being handled by hardware decoding.

There's only two options at this point: One is use a Broadcom Crystal HD chip inside the mini (replaces your internal wifi chip, so you'll need to get USB wifi if you want wifi). The other option is to kidnap an Apple employee/developer and force them to tell you the secrets of Apple's HW decoding APIs.

You can also just turn Hardware decoding off. The CPU will handle it just fine, and software decoding tends to have a little bit better quality (or so I'm told. I have not done any "scientific" tests personally). You do have a very powerful i5 in there, after all.
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Ned Scott Wrote:Until a few years ago we couldn't do any hardware decoding on Mac OS X because Apple wouldn't open up the API. Even now the API is still mostly closed. I believe (but I do not know for sure) that this is the problem with interlaced content being handled by hardware decoding.

There's only two options at this point: One is use a Broadcom Crystal HD chip inside the mini (replaces your internal wifi chip, so you'll need to get USB wifi if you want wifi). The other option is to kidnap an Apple employee/developer and force them to tell you the secrets of Apple's HW decoding APIs.

You can also just turn Hardware decoding off. The CPU will handle it just fine, and software decoding tends to have a little bit better quality (or so I'm told. I have not done any "scientific" tests personally). You do have a very powerful i5 in there, after all.

Hi Ned,

thanks for your answer.

The thing is that the Mini gets a bit noisy when the CPU is doing all the work.

Within XBMC, wouldn't it be a good idea then if XBMC - in the case it 'finds' 1080i material - just automatically ignores the hardware acceleration switch in the settings in order to avoid a crash? This would be really helpful.

Otherwise I always have to know before starting play back of a file if it contains interlaced material or not... Basically, this makes HW acceleration useless then, at least when you have a mix of 1080i / 1080p files in your collection. You'll never know if your next playback attempt will crash XBMC or not.

Chris
unRAID Server, Pioneer VSX-LX52, Panasonic 65VT30, Marusys VU+ Duo, Zotac AD10
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ix400 Wrote:Hi Ned,

thanks for your answer.

The thing is that the Mini gets a bit noisy when the CPU is doing all the work.

Within XBMC, wouldn't it be a good idea then if XBMC - in the case it 'finds' 1080i material - just automatically ignores the hardware acceleration switch in the settings in order to avoid a crash? This would be really helpful.

Otherwise I always have to know before starting play back of a file if it contains interlaced material or not... Basically, this makes HW acceleration useless then, at least when you have a mix of 1080i / 1080p files in your collection. You'll never know if your next playback attempt will crash XBMC or not.

Chris

Actually I mentioned this to Davilla yesterday and he said he actually had some ideas to try out for interlaced content. Him and all the devs are really busy right now cleaning up code and getting rid of bugs, so I wouldn't expect this to be ready in time for Eden, but it sounds like there is hope.

As for an automatic switch, that's not a bad idea. You might want to make a feature request at http://trac.xbmc.org for that. (trac log-in is the same as it is here on the forums). There's some info on the wiki about submitting a feature request, but it's pretty straight forward.

Although something like this might have been added in the latest nightlies (the pre-Eden builds). I know a bunch of interlacing reform was pushed through somewhat recently. If you haven't tried a nightly yet you might want to check it out to see if it handles interlaced situations any better. Just make a backup of your XBMC userdata folder
Code:
/Users/<your_user_name>/Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata
so that you can downgrade back to a stable copy if you want to.
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Ned Scott Wrote:Actually I mentioned this to Davilla yesterday and he said he actually had some ideas to try out for interlaced content. Him and all the devs are really busy right now cleaning up code and getting rid of bugs, so I wouldn't expect this to be ready in time for Eden, but it sounds like there is hope.

As for an automatic switch, that's not a bad idea. You might want to make a feature request at http://trac.xbmc.org for that. (trac log-in is the same as it is here on the forums). There's some info on the wiki about submitting a feature request, but it's pretty straight forward.

Although something like this might have been added in the latest nightlies (the pre-Eden builds). I know a bunch of interlacing reform was pushed through somewhat recently. If you haven't tried a nightly yet you might want to check it out to see if it handles interlaced situations any better. Just make a backup of your XBMC userdata folder
Code:
/Users/<your_user_name>/Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata
so that you can downgrade back to a stable copy if you want to.

I made my observations with the nightly build from yesterday. So if there was a change in the code with respect to that problem it hasn't made it's way to the nightlies yet.

Sorry again, I really don't want to be rude. But to my opinion all problems related to playback should be on top of the priority list. This VDPAU deinterlacing-crashes are a pain, and the problem has not been addressed since more than a year now.

So basically I'm not requesting a new feature, I'm requesting a fix (or workaround) for a bug that is known already for a long time.

At this stage I have to say that the Mac OS X version of XBMC is definitely much weaker than its Win7 counterpart.

An that's a pity considering what for a nice OS Lion really is.

Chris


P.S.: Sorry if I sound rude somehow, I'm not a native english speaker and didn't know how to phrase it better without not showing that I'm not happy with the situation.
unRAID Server, Pioneer VSX-LX52, Panasonic 65VT30, Marusys VU+ Duo, Zotac AD10
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ix400 Wrote:Sorry again, I really don't want to be rude. But to my opinion all problems related to playback should be on top of the priority list. This VDPAU deinterlacing-crashes are a pain, and the problem has not been addressed since more than a year now.

It's VDA, not VDPAU which only exists on linux platforms.

Sorry, but I do have to call bull on this, interlace detection for vda went in on c4a770b3 (Apr 27, "add max reference frame and interlace detection"), 0b440670 (Sep 8, was a recent change. "relax interlaced restriction for vda/vtb as we gets miss-detects from parsing the spc"), and about 5 mins ago, 219f8594 ("restore h264 interlace detection for vda"). Tomorrows nightly will have it.
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davilla Wrote:It's VDA, not VDPAU which only exists on linux platforms.

Sorry, but I do have to call bull on this, interlace detection for vda went in on c4a770b3 (Apr 27, "add max reference frame and interlace detection"), 0b440670 (Sep 8, was a recent change. "relax interlaced restriction for vda/vtb as we gets miss-detects from parsing the spc"), and about 5 mins ago, 219f8594 ("restore h264 interlace detection for vda"). Tomorrows nightly will have it.

Thanks a lot. I will test it tomorrow.

Chris
unRAID Server, Pioneer VSX-LX52, Panasonic 65VT30, Marusys VU+ Duo, Zotac AD10
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opps, reverted vtb instead of vda by mistake. next cycle.
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davilla Wrote:opps, reverted vtb instead of vda by mistake. next cycle.

Davilla, thank you very much. The new nightly just came out and it works great.

How can we get Apple to implement the "interlaced" support? And proper 23.976 support is also missing, but that's a different story.

I'm registered as an Apple Dev, let me know if I can help somehow (e.g. by posting something into the devs forums).

Thanks again,

Chris
unRAID Server, Pioneer VSX-LX52, Panasonic 65VT30, Marusys VU+ Duo, Zotac AD10
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ix400 Wrote:Davilla, thank you very much. The new nightly just came out and it works great.

How can we get Apple to implement the "interlaced" support? And proper 23.976 support is also missing, but that's a different story.

I'm registered as an Apple Dev, let me know if I can help somehow (e.g. by posting something into the devs forums).

Thanks again,

Chris

As mentioned, Davillas fix works. But apart from that I collected the following experiences so far with the combos Eden / Mini 2011 (AMD) / 10.7.2 Golden Master / Windows7

1. During playback, Eden OS X sometimes gets out of step. Playback starts to be choppy a bit then. Pressing the "left arrow" key (video jumps back 30s) helps to get back in track. 24p material seems to need the "adjust / sync refresh rate" settings, 50i material does not. So I have permanently switch them on and off, depending on the material I'm going to play.

2. Playback seems to be more silky when using Eden Win7.

3. Eden Win7 supports hardware acceleration for more video formats (e.g. interlaced).

4. XBMC Win7 will support the HD sound formats (Frodo nightlies). Apple probably won't support the HD formats within OS X.

5. Win7 allows automatic refresh rate switching.

As I said earlier, it's a pity, the XBMC / Win7 combo wins the battle.

Bootcamped my Mini now. At least it's Apple hardware I'm running Win7 on.

Chris

Sad
unRAID Server, Pioneer VSX-LX52, Panasonic 65VT30, Marusys VU+ Duo, Zotac AD10
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ix400 Wrote:As mentioned, Davillas fix works. But apart from that I collected the following experiences so far with the combos Eden / Mini 2011 (AMD) / 10.7.2 Golden Master / Windows7

1. During playback, Eden OS X sometimes gets out of step. Playback starts to be choppy a bit then. Pressing the "left arrow" key (video jumps back 30s) helps to get back in track. 24p material seems to need the "adjust / sync refresh rate" settings, 50i material does not. So I have permanently switch them on and off, depending on the material I'm going to play.

2. Playback seems to be more silky when using Eden Win7.

3. Eden Win7 supports hardware acceleration for more video formats (e.g. interlaced).

4. XBMC Win7 will support the HD sound formats (Frodo nightlies). Apple probably won't support the HD formats within OS X.

5. Win7 allows automatic refresh rate switching.

As I said earlier, it's a pity, the XBMC / Win7 combo wins the battle.

Bootcamped my Mini now. At least it's Apple hardware I'm running Win7 on.

Chris

Sad

i did the same thing, bootcamp windows 7, it just works so much better, unfortunately
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prophetizer Wrote:i did the same thing, bootcamp windows 7, it just works so much better, unfortunately

This is all simply frustrating.

No
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prophetizer Wrote:i did the same thing, bootcamp windows 7, it just works so much better, unfortunately

I too want to by a MacMini 2011, high or low spec doesnt really matter for me ... as long as it works.. and works good! Smile

Even if I go for highend mac mini spec do I still have to run Win7 on it to make it run good?

And form Prophetizers and ix400s post win7 is the way to go... and Win7 works flawless on the MacMini? (not that importent for me cause I will only see XMBC anyhow =)
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contentwhores Wrote:Any of the specs will be fine. The Intel HD3000 graphics are more than powerful enough to decode 1080p even with VC-1 encoding and of course would work fine with H.264 as well; the ATI card is better yet. Put is this way, I use a Mac Mini from 2 generations ago (it's a 2Ghz Core 2 Duo with NVidia graphics) and that plays anything I throw at it and the CPU usage stays in single digits with smooth playback.

What is more interesting to me is that both the Intel HD3K and the ATI 6630M both support bitstreaming of lossless audio (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD) over HDMI. Only question is whether this is supported in OS X 10.7 Lion and/or Windows 7 with Bootcamp...

I was holding off buying a new HTPC until the Mac Minis came out - I was looking at a custom-build with an i3-2105 or i5-2405 in a DH67CF motherboard (which has Intel HD3k graphics) so given the specs of the new Mac Minis it may be that be a good choice! Just need to get my hands on one to try it out...
What kind of user would need the speck bump? I'm considering a Mac Mini for office stuff and Full Bluray/ISO Bluray playback. If you can do it with your Core 2 Duo, I guess the 599$ should be more than enough right?

thanks
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wrekk Wrote:I too want to by a MacMini 2011, high or low spec doesnt really matter for me ... as long as it works.. and works good! Smile

Even if I go for highend mac mini spec do I still have to run Win7 on it to make it run good?

And form Prophetizers and ix400s post win7 is the way to go... and Win7 works flawless on the MacMini? (not that importent for me cause I will only see XBMC anyhow =)

well, biggest problem for me was refresh rate change, as i get annoyed by the little frame glitch every 45 seconds or so without it. if u don't notice it, you don't need to run the windows version. also, only way i can play TrueHD and DTAMA
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[MAC] New Thunderbolt Mac Mini!0