[MAC] New Thunderbolt Mac Mini!

schwarzmuller Wrote:These issues:





Which model do you have?

i have the 2011 AMD i7

I have eden beta2 running on my mini (with amd GPU).
Overall I am happy with the performance. Eden2 also looks to be pretty stable.

The CPU utilization is pretty low for h.264 videos.
But with vc-1 encoded ones (or 1080i AVCHD .m2ts videos off my camcorder) the CPU utilization jumps up. Don't see the same if I run xbmc in boot camped windows on the same machine.
Looks to me like OS X may be the culprit here. It may not be h/w accelerating the vc-1 decode. I could be wrong of course.
But I guess I can live with this. Not too many videos in my setup that are vc-1 encoded

Is the cpu jump an issue ? In other words, is it intefering with other apps. I have the macmini 2011 server and am running it with hardware acceleration off so that it is compatible with the high end codecs. It doesn't interfere whilst simulitaneously severing a stream to another client and performing other server functions.

I searched through the thread, but I couldn't seem to find a definitive answer.

Will one of these 2011 Mac Minis bitstream HD audio in BootCamped Windows 7 if they have the base Intel HD 3000 Graphics instead of the upgraded AMD card?

yes, thats something i am interested too.
if yes thats the point for me buying a mac mini with i7 and amd graphics.

(2012-02-08 21:38)atandon Wrote:  I have eden beta2 running on my mini (with amd GPU).
Overall I am happy with the performance. Eden2 also looks to be pretty stable.

The CPU utilization is pretty low for h.264 videos.
But with vc-1 encoded ones (or 1080i AVCHD .m2ts videos off my camcorder) the CPU utilization jumps up. Don't see the same if I run xbmc in boot camped windows on the same machine.
Looks to me like OS X may be the culprit here. It may not be h/w accelerating the vc-1 decode. I could be wrong of course.
But I guess I can live with this. Not too many videos in my setup that are vc-1 encoded

Correct, vc-1 is not h/w accelerated on OSX.

Anyone know if i can bitstream hd audio from the base mac mini i5 / intel 3000 hd

I remember reading something that i need a intel MEI download of some sort, now that we have a audio branch i would love to hear if anyone has tried it

talking windows of course

(2012-05-01 18:49)henrikyo Wrote:  Anyone know if i can bitstream hd audio from the base mac mini i5 / intel 3000 hd

I remember reading something that i need a intel MEI download of some sort, now that we have a audio branch i would love to hear if anyone has tried it

talking windows of course

... I'm also quite interested in this. Would love to run XBMC on a Mac again.

Chris

(2012-03-19 03:21)gizmotoy Wrote:  I searched through the thread, but I couldn't seem to find a definitive answer.

Will one of these 2011 Mac Minis bitstream HD audio in BootCamped Windows 7 if they have the base Intel HD 3000 Graphics instead of the upgraded AMD card?

Yes!
I recently bought an entry level Mac Mini (i5, Intel HD3000) and I can confirm that HD Audio can be bitstreamed while playing lossless bluray content (from original Bluray disc or from mkv file) using BootCamped Windows 7. I have done this through Total Media Theatre 5 as well as an XBMC version supporting bitstreaming of HD Audio.

However!!!!
I have not yet been able to do it on OSX. Still trying to find a way but so far it seems the best option is bitstreamed DTS Surround. Sucks to run Windows on a Mac but so far it seems to be the only way to get bitstreamed HD Audio.

Is the Intel QuickSync also possible with the Sandy Bridge Mini under BootCamp? And has anyone some experience doing any transcoding with this feature? Output quality, speed, flexibility and so on..