2009-07-30, 02:34
With the latest SVNs, over the past couple of weeks, I've been noticing a lot of stuttering in video on my Mac Mini. Or whatever you call it - Some people call it judder, jitter, hiccups, choppy. I've got one of the older models, but still a C2D and 4 GB of RAM in there.
As per usual, it is most common under higher bitrates in 1080p, around 20+ FPS, resulting in a choppy skipping forward motion of the video, and normally reserved to more fluid moments with a lot of motion on the screen. Audio seems fine.
I realize some of this might have to do with the encode of the mkv file itself, but also want to do my best to get the most out of the system. It seems that some users have tried Plex and had better results (I plan to do that as well) and also am going to copy a file locally to the machine and compare, to see if the network is a bottleneck (I don't expect but you never know).
Aside from turning Vertical Sync on ALWAYS, what other video-related settings might I be missing that I could use to benefit the video? I am streaming over a wired network, yet I see no cache option anywhere (I recall this option being visibile on older XBMC builds). Is this something you need to set in a config file manually, and if so, what values might stop the dropped frames?
If anyone else is experiencing choppy video on their mini with the latest SVN builds, maybe we can talk about it here and find some solutions. I know there was a thread like this for the Apple TV, but I figured maybe us Mini owners under OSX could talk as well.
BTW my mini was one of the last models with the Intel 950 for video, so it's looking like GPU acceleration won't be possible, so no Linux for me.
As per usual, it is most common under higher bitrates in 1080p, around 20+ FPS, resulting in a choppy skipping forward motion of the video, and normally reserved to more fluid moments with a lot of motion on the screen. Audio seems fine.
I realize some of this might have to do with the encode of the mkv file itself, but also want to do my best to get the most out of the system. It seems that some users have tried Plex and had better results (I plan to do that as well) and also am going to copy a file locally to the machine and compare, to see if the network is a bottleneck (I don't expect but you never know).
Aside from turning Vertical Sync on ALWAYS, what other video-related settings might I be missing that I could use to benefit the video? I am streaming over a wired network, yet I see no cache option anywhere (I recall this option being visibile on older XBMC builds). Is this something you need to set in a config file manually, and if so, what values might stop the dropped frames?
If anyone else is experiencing choppy video on their mini with the latest SVN builds, maybe we can talk about it here and find some solutions. I know there was a thread like this for the Apple TV, but I figured maybe us Mini owners under OSX could talk as well.
BTW my mini was one of the last models with the Intel 950 for video, so it's looking like GPU acceleration won't be possible, so no Linux for me.