[MAC] XBMC for Mac vs. Plex native 1080p video playback on Mac Mini (NVIDIA 9400)?
#61
Well I got sick of it and installed a dual boot minimal ubuntu running the movies just fine. VDPAU is a wonderful thing.

But I'm still willing to test. So I did what you said and play the spirit again under OSX.

aq was 99% and going down to around 70% about every 3 seconds.
vq is really jumpy ranging from 0-99% middling at around 30%

The interesting thing is the scene when xbmc freaks out.
aq drops down to 0% and barely comes up again. vq is going up to 99%. Sound goes out of sync then.
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#62
Z3rO Wrote:The interesting thing is the scene when xbmc freaks out.
aq drops down to 0% and barely comes up again. vq is going up to 99%. Sound goes out of sync then.

That's the symptom for demuxer queue starvation. vq is full but aq is empty. The full vq prevents aq from filling and all hell breaks loose. There have been some tweaks to aq/vq but the demuxer queues really need a re-factor to prevent this very issue.
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#63
davilla Wrote:That's the symptom for demuxer queue starvation. vq is full but aq is empty. The full vq prevents aq from filling and all hell breaks loose. There have been some tweaks to aq/vq but the demuxer queues really need a re-factor to prevent this very issue.

is this problem common in OSX ?

here's mine:
MacBook Pro
Mac OSX Leopard 10.5.7 2.16Ghz
Intel C2D, 3GB
this test was via wifi from my media server.
Image

the more I read the more undecided I feel to what to buy, a Mac mini or another small factor PC.
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#64
reaven Wrote:is this problem common in OSX ?

here's mine:
MacBook Pro
Mac OSX Leopard 10.5.7 2.16Ghz
Intel C2D, 3GB
this test was via wifi from my media server.

the more I read the more undecided I feel to what to buy, a Mac mini or another small factor PC.

It isn't common. My Late 08 Macbook runs most movies pretty much flawless. On the other side it has 2,4 GHz so that could be doing the magic here.
You could run linux and use VDPAU which is awesome on the Mini. Even the Killa Sample plays just fine. But it's a bit of work and fiddling. OSX just works out of the box. I still hope for for Snow Leopard and OpenCL.

Anyway I love my new lunchbox. Big Grin
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#65
Quote:You could run linux and use VDPAU which is awesome on the Mini
you mean installing Linux on the mini ?
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#66
Yepp, there's a thread over here about it. It works pretty good with some limitations which probably will be resolved in near future.
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#67
jmarshall Wrote:Thanks - nothing obvious from the logs - everything appears to be being setup basically the same way as far as ffmpeg is concerned. My last idea (given your xbmc log) is that the audio output stage isn't as optimal as it could be in XBMC - it uses a fairly small buffer I believe which may be being emptied too quickly, but I'm just guessing here. Will ping phi2039 for his comments with respect to this.

EDIT: Ironman log is quite different, interestingly enough. This may point to more differences in ffmpeg.

EDIT2: No idea where one is supposed to get the Plex ffmpeg changes from - it's not clear to me from elan's github repo exactly where he generates his build from in this regard. Perhaps I'm missing something?

Cheers,
Jonathan
While Plex uses the same ffmpeg libraries as XBMC, I believe it may have significantly branched with regards to audio libraries.

See http://elan.plexapp.com/2008/11/11/plexs...ut-module/ as an example.

This may account for why Plex is having less problems.

As a general comment, with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard, shipping tomorrow Smile) Apple are adding support for OpenCL as a standard library for off-loading tasks to a GPU. OpenCL is an 'open' standard see http://www.khronos.org/opencl/ and Nvidia have released initial OpenCL drivers for Linux. Some Linux developers see OpenCL as a huge opportunity, see http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16362/ but I get the impression that the ffmpeg team are less 'open' to new ideas. As OpenCL is an open standard and is available for Mac, Linux and Windows, and is being supported by all the GPU manufacturers, it is mind bogglingly obvious this is the way to go for open-source libraries like ffmpeg.
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#68
jelockwood Wrote:While Plex uses the same ffmpeg libraries as XBMC, I believe it may have significantly branched with regards to audio libraries.

See http://elan.plexapp.com/2008/11/11/plexs...ut-module/ as an example.

This may account for why Plex is having less problems.

As a general comment, with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard, shipping tomorrow Smile) Apple are adding support for OpenCL as a standard library for off-loading tasks to a GPU. OpenCL is an 'open' standard see http://www.khronos.org/opencl/ and Nvidia have released initial OpenCL drivers for Linux. Some Linux developers see OpenCL as a huge opportunity, see http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16362/ but I get the impression that the ffmpeg team are less 'open' to new ideas. As OpenCL is an open standard and is available for Mac, Linux and Windows, and is being supported by all the GPU manufacturers, it is mind bogglingly obvious this is the way to go for open-source libraries like ffmpeg.

XBMC (svn versions ) is also using coreaudio, the previous releases did not include this change. XBMC's implementation of coreaudio works very well. You might try build from svn or getting XBMC from a nightly build site.

While OpenCL seems like the magic bullet, it's not. It does allow CPU/GPU computation but until someone actually writes a video decoder using OpenCL, it's all vapor. Writing a video decoder using OpenCL is non-trivial.
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#69
davilla Wrote:XBMC (svn versions ) is also using coreaudio, the previous releases did not include this change. XBMC's implementation of coreaudio works very well. You might try build from svn or getting XBMC from a nightly build site.

While OpenCL seems like the magic bullet, it's not. It does allow CPU/GPU computation but until someone actually writes a video decoder using OpenCL, it's all vapor. Writing a video decoder using OpenCL is non-trivial.

I totally agree, the point is that in this case, if the ffmpeg team did use OpenCL it would be applicable for Linux, Windows and Mac, in other words for all intents, all the platforms ffmpeg is used on. Unlike CUDA, or VDPAU, etc. it would mean write once, use anywhere possibilities.
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#70
jelockwood Wrote:I totally agree, the point is that in this case, if the ffmpeg team did use OpenCL it would be applicable for Linux, Windows and Mac, in other words for all intents, all the platforms ffmpeg is used on. Unlike CUDA, or VDPAU, etc. it would mean write once, use anywhere possibilities.

Yes, high potential but low to no probability of this happening from ffmpeg devs. They seem to follow their own plan.
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[MAC] XBMC for Mac vs. Plex native 1080p video playback on Mac Mini (NVIDIA 9400)?0