Poor performance on Snow Leopard

On 10.6.2, the video playback performance on external display still *****...
only getting around 10-15fps for normal dvd quality content on vlc and mplayer.

You are an absolute Champion!

Thanks a bunch. Now I can run my mac mini media centre in "10.5.8 emulation mode" and the apple remote works exactly as it should.. it controls the active program, be it iTunes OR Eye TV

Genius!!!!!
I had already installed Candelier with no joy.
Turned on Leopard Compatibility Mode.
*Ta Daaaaa*
Top stuff - thanks so much.


TIm

Glad to hear it worked.

The preference "Leopard Compatibility" is confusing because it suggests that it should be toggled only if you're running in Leopard. It actually should be toggled in Snow Leopard to make remotes that were compatible in Leopard, but busted in Snow Leopard, work again.

Message was edited by: Gunny Sack

Just wanted to post in that 10.6.2 resolved the issue for me as well.

For those who are saying the stuttering is fixed by 10.6.2, are any of you using 1080p display mode? I tried DVD Player on my brand new Mac Mini and saw the exact same stuttering as before. I did not try Front Row or reinstall my Elgato and EyeTV (which also stuttered on HD channels) before I packed the Mini and related parts back into their boxes for return to Apple. I'll unpack it and try again if someone tells me their new Mac Mini quit stuttering with with Front Row and with their Elgato Hybrid on a TV in 1080p mode (and no one tells me theirs still stutters).

It is a 2.53Ghz, 4GB ram, Core 2 Duo Mac Mini. Should be up to the task, don't you think?

I still have the problem on my 1080p TV. No problem on laptop screen. Didn't try the laptop screen before the update.

Badunit wrote:
For those who are saying the stuttering is fixed by 10.6.2, are any of you using 1080p display mode? I tried DVD Player on my brand new Mac Mini and saw the exact same stuttering as before.

You appear to be experiencing a different problem. For most people here, myself included, the problem was that video playback of whatever kind (DVD, on-disk video) stuttered when viewed +through Front Row+, but DVD Player worked fine.

I have a 1.6GHz CD Mini with 2GB RAM and DVD Player was fine on a 1080p TV in 10.6.1. Since it was unwatchable in Front Row, I reverted back to 10.5 and haven't yet tried 10.6.2.

After upgrading to 10.6.2:

-iTunes SD / HD purchases now play normally in Front Row.
-Divx AVIs now play normally in Front Row.
-DVDs (only checked 1) now play normally in Front Row.

Previously all of the above had stuttering issues for me in 10.6 and 10.6.1 and required either QuickTime or DVD Player. Sometimes only VLC would play them stutter-free.

Also, the remote no longer launches iTunes in the background and plays music when pressing play/ pause in Front Row.

Still an issue: Front Row / QuickTime plays no video (black screen only) if the display (projector) was not turned on when the Mac Mini was booted up. So the mini needs rebooted with the projector on.

I think this has something to do with 0MB of RAM being allocated to the virtual video card at boot up if no monitor is detected. I have also had problems with iMovie and Final Cut Pro refusing to open with the display turned off saying that they require more than “0MB of RAM”. I’ve also frequently had problems (in 10.5 and 10.6) with any hardware-accelerated imagery not showing up over ScreenSharing. This includes image files, pdfs, and video playback using Quicklook. They all just show black.

Badunit wrote:
For those who are saying the stuttering is fixed by 10.6.2, are any of you using 1080p display mode? I tried DVD Player on my brand new Mac Mini and saw the exact same stuttering as before. I did not try Front Row or reinstall my Elgato and EyeTV (which also stuttered on HD channels) before I packed the Mini and related parts back into their boxes for return to Apple. I'll unpack it and try again if someone tells me their new Mac Mini quit stuttering with with Front Row and with their Elgato Hybrid on a TV in 1080p mode (and no one tells me theirs still stutters).

It is a 2.53Ghz, 4GB ram, Core 2 Duo Mac Mini. Should be up to the task, don't you think?

I have a Mac Mini (Late 2009) Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz, 4GB, attached to a 1920x1080@60p Sony video-projector VPL-VW100 through DisplayPort->HDMI. Note that I also have Gefen HDMI Detective Plus in the path for when I use the Mac Mini headless through VNC.
10.6.2 made stuttering disappear from FrontRow which is now on par with DVDPlayer; I overcame the newly introduced IR remote bug using the Candelair driver.

EyeTV 3.2.1 on HD H.264 channels is an other story : the EyeTV process CPU consumption oscillates between two modes, low (about 80-100% depending on channel bit rate) and high (170%) with heavy stuttering in the later case. Restarting EyeTV makes the problem disappear for a few minutes, then it starts again. Recordings of HD channels do not exhibit the same behavior on pure playback (no live TV window opened).
I use an Elgato Diversity Dual Tuner DVB-T Stick through USB.
I submitted a case to Elgato, but did not get an answer yet.

I am having the same issue in my brand new iMac, model 10,1, Intel Core 2 Duo, 3.06Ghz, 4Gb RAM, 500GB HDD, OS: 10.6.2 (10C540) with Darwin 10.2.0 kernel.

Playback is fine in QT, iTunes, VLC, or Mplayer full screen. Playback of video content in Front Row is jerkey. The IR remote works fine, playback launches quickly for all content, it's just jerkey as the player drops frames to stay caught up with the audio/base frame rate.

Still looking for ideas...

SeanFit2000 wrote:
Still an issue: Front Row / QuickTime plays no video (black screen only) if the display (projector) was not turned on when the Mac Mini was booted up. So the mini needs rebooted with the projector on.

I think this has something to do with 0MB of RAM being allocated to the virtual video card at boot up if no monitor is detected. I have also had problems with iMovie and Final Cut Pro refusing to open with the display turned off saying that they require more than “0MB of RAM”.

Gefen HDMI/DVI Detective Plus would take care of that "monitor off" problem.
Especially useful for an headless mac.

@geeji Thanks for the advice. I’ll look into that.

Also, to amend my previous post. I’m now again seeing stuttering in iTunes purchases: an HD movie and DivX AVIs in Quicktime X and Front Row. The DivX AVI played in VLC and the HD iTunes movie played in Quicktime 7 but stuttered in Quicktime X and Front Row.

Let me just thank seanfit for nailing what was causing the problem of jerky video playback on my mac mini under SL. Turns out his finding of 0 ram being allocated to the video card if the mini boots without a monitor being turned on was exactly my problem. I use the mini as a HTPC to a Samsung 1080p LCD. Once I rebooted with the LCD on, my playback problems went away.

Hope this helps someone else. My mini also serves as a music server and it is set to boot in the early evening for this purpose, prior to the TV being turned on. It turns on that this creates the whole playback problem. I will look into the Gefen solution to avoid this issue moving forward.

-m

I’m glad you were able to confirm it. dharmaman, does your Mac Mini have the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M or the Intel 950? I was hoping the new nvidia-equiped Minis wouldn’t have this problem and was even thinking about upgrading rather than buying the Gefen solution.

I rebooted my mini last night because of stuttering issues (with the projector on) and when I turned the projector back on this morning videos still played fine. So it appears that the Mini does not deallocate the RAM when the display is turned off, but I’m not completely sure.

My Mac Mini also serves as a music and file server and is always on. dharmaman, can you tell me what happens in the following scenario?
1. boot up with the display ON
2. turn off the display for an extended period of time (leaving the mini on). I’ve noticed that about 5 minutes after I turn my projector off the virtual display (via screensharing) reverts to a default 1280 x 1024. I think this is because my projector stays on in sleep mode for 5 minutes after the lamp turns off.
3. Turn the display back on without rebooting the Mac Mini.
Is the playback smooth or do you still see stuttering? Thanks!