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Video Stutter/Sticking - Not Smooth

I bought a brand new 2011 Mac Mini (mid grade, 2.5 i5 with AMD Radeon graphics card) about a week and a half ago. The goal was to hook it up to my 42" plasma HDTV in the living room to watch TV shows, movies, and streaming video. The setup went fine and it loos good....for everything except video. Any video media I play back, mostly purchases from the iTunes store and using iTunes or QuickTime to play back, results in horrible stuttering or sticking of the video. For example, I bought the most recent Star Trek movie that Apple uses as an example on their computers. When I play it back it goes about 15 seconds, then briefly pauses, then goes another 15 seconds, then briefly pauses. This goes on and on, hence what I call "stuttering." Now if I attempt to play back HD video from the Flip Mino HD that I use, the playback is ten times worse! The sturrering occurs regularly instead of every 15 seconds. Now for the kicker....this does not happen on my 4 year old black plastic MacBook. Both are running Lion. So the Mini has tons more horsepower than the old MacBook yet the old MacBook plays video flawlessly while the Mini stutters along. This is very frustrating. I do not expect this from an Apple product and I'm so upset I'll likely return it.

Anyone else have this issue??

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Aug 5, 2011 3:28 AM

128 replies

Macbookjimbo Author

Level 1

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Aug 8, 2011 7:32 PM in response to Macbookjimbo

Very interesting find Douglas, thank you. I will try switching HDMI ports in the next couple of days. The port I'm using now is the one my PS3 was hooked up to which I played BluRay movies through flawlessly. So it would surprise me if this was the issue, but who knows, it's definitely worth a try.

Level 2

300 points

Aug 8, 2011 8:42 PM in response to Douglas Suiter

Well, that is interesting. I, too, am using a Samsung HDTV, the model 8500 55". I wonder if other folks experiencing this are all on Samsung TVs.

For those using Samsungs I have noted that changing the name of the device sets more than just the name. It configures setting internally. This is especially true for hdmi1.

I switches from hdmi1 to hdmi4, the only other free port I have. I've played a movie that has randomly stalled in a few moments over 18 min now with no stalling. I see a skipped frame every here and there still, but we may be onto something here.

Douglas, if you are convinced your problem is gone would you mind sharing your full settings for the hdmi port you are using?

Aug 8, 2011 9:07 PM in response to D7

I am now very optimistic that has resolved my picture issue. Settings on the TV are all set to as basic as they can be in terms of noise reduction features or anything of that nature.

All pretty straight forward - but the next part is particularly interesting. I have noticed on the Samsung that you can set the picture to 4:3, 16:9 or something called "Just Scan" aparently designed for computer displays.

I had the Samsung set to 16:9, but I also had (in OSX Lion system prefs for displays) set to undercan to fit the Mac desktop comfortably on my display.

Instead, I set the Samsung to "Just Scan" and then in system prefs I no longer needed to underscan to fit the image. It fits perfectly on "Just Scan" mode.

This has got to mean less processing of the picture on the way to the display (and then probably less processing going on in the display itself).

I googled the phrase "Just Scan" and this confirmed what i thought.

Time will tell but so for so good for plaback of 1080 .mkv video 🙂

Audio is another story. I am unfortunately experiencing issues when I try to play Dolby 5.1 audio. It plays fine, but when I return to the system audio is no longer being sent to HDMI. I can set it to built in audio and hear it, but the only thing that will get it out of HDMI again is a system reboot. I notice a lot of people are experiencing this...but perhaps this is another story for another thread.

Let me know how you go!

Level 2

300 points

Aug 8, 2011 9:16 PM in response to Douglas Suiter

Douglas, did you set the name of the device? Just guessing, I set mine to BluRay. I'll let you know how this goes after the kids get to bed and I can continue the test.

Aug 8, 2011 11:26 PM in response to D7

I did not set the name for the device - and I don't think I will 😉

Aug 9, 2011 2:49 AM in response to Macbookjimbo

Douglas, the audio issue is not new. It happened with

the update to OSX 10.6.8 and just "knowingly" got carried

through into Lion. Only recently has an update been issued

to fix it on 10.6.8.

I also found out something last night. I wanted to try watching

an iTunes HD movie once again. And guess what? It played

back just fine. The only difference was that I did "absolutely"

nothing after boot but start iTunes. When the movie was over,

started another one just to see if all was well, and it played fine.

So then, quit iTunes and played a DVD with XBMC. Watched for

a short time. Then quit and went back to iTunes and started an

HD movie. Severe stuttering/stalling unwatchable.

Once again, with my set up atleast, if things are not done just

right and in only one way Lion borks things. I have looked at

process monitor and do not see anything wrong. Memory

looks good, no errant processes going amok.

Bottom line I guess is that Lion is just plain UNSTABLE on

the Mini platform!!!!

Macbookjimbo Author

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Aug 9, 2011 3:23 AM in response to Macbookjimbo

Interesting point about using underscan vs "Just." I'm currently using the Mini's underscan to make the image fit onscreen, but tonight as a test I'll turn off underscan and use the TV's "Just" feature instead and see if that does anything. I don't have a Samsung, I have a Panasonic, but it's an easy option to try. I'll let you know. Based upon woodmeister's above reply however, I'm thinking this is still an iTunes/Lion issue.

Macbookjimbo Author

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Aug 9, 2011 5:57 PM in response to Macbookjimbo

Well, unfortunately "Just" did not work for me. I turned off underscan in system preferences which makes the picture too big for my screen (menu bar gone, dock half gone) then set the aspect ratio on my TV to "Just" That didn't change the picture size, I still couldn't see the menu bar or half of the dock. I know "Just" does work as I can see it change when I use it watching TV, but I guess it can't tell when it's hooked to a computer......odd I tried the other aspect rations as well and they did change the screen size, but "Just" did not. Bummer. Back to the drawing board...

Aug 10, 2011 6:23 AM in response to Macbookjimbo

This isn't just a Mac Mini problem, I've notice the same lack of smoothness on my mid 2011 27" iMac with a 2GB video card! You'd think that it would be more than enough to play smooth videos but not since my Lion and itunes upgrade.

I haven't tried out my mid 2011 Mac mini yet, It's connected to my 26" LCD TV through HDMI, if it also plays my iTunes bad then I'm seriously thinking about throwing my movies on a seperate drive and reinstalling Snow Leopard and sticking to that until this problem is solved!

Macbookjimbo Author

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Aug 10, 2011 5:55 PM in response to Macbookjimbo

Mark, not that I'm glad you're having trouble too but it is good to know it's not just the mini. Hopefully Apple is working on a soon-to-be-released fix. Last night I ran one more test. I had bought a couple of episodes of "Star Trek" many years ago. This is the original series from the 1960's. Needless to say, it's not HD. I played that back as all of my previous tests have been HD media. Well it stuttered in all the same places too. So it doesn't seem to matter which type of video I play - as long as it's video of any type, it stutters.

Adam2104

Level 1

20 points

Aug 12, 2011 6:36 PM in response to Macbookjimbo

Im having this same problem. The video just doesn't play as smooth as I expect it to. Its hard to explain. Its almost like the frame rate is just a smidge too slow. I have a Core i5 2011 mini connected via HDMI to a Sony SXRD 50A2000.

I have a crusty old Dell connected to the same TV using HDMI and I don't see the same problem with the same media content.

Adam2104

Level 1

20 points

Aug 12, 2011 10:07 PM in response to Macbookjimbo

Does anyone else have Filevalut2 enabled? I have it turned on, I wonder if maybe that's part of the problem?

Macbookjimbo Author

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Aug 13, 2011 3:49 AM in response to Macbookjimbo

Nope, no filevault for me. In fact since I use the mini as an HTPC in my den, I have no antivirus software running and almost no login items loading at startup. Pretty clean.

Aug 13, 2011 3:00 PM in response to Macbookjimbo

I finally gave up on Lion on my Mini, I don't know if I missed one restart after Lion was installed, but it was stuck and I was forced to manually restart! Then I had a HUGE MASS of permissions that needed to be corrected just for it to work... slowly! This is a Mid 2010 Mac Mini, the first batch that had the HDMI input.

Quite a mess for a machine that just has movies and TV shows on it!

So I copied all the media to another drive and reinstalled Snow Leopard, I'm still putting all the media back but so far it is a lot faster than during the Lion Upgrade!

Welcome back Front Row! after all this is my HTPC, that's all I ever use it for! Maybe I'll re-upgrade when they fix some of these problems

Aug 13, 2011 3:05 PM in response to Macbookjimbo

The funny thing is I've not seen many iMac owners with this problem, I posted in the iMac discussions and nobody's replied!

Over all it must be some kind of problem with Lion not using the Video memory to the fullest extent, afterall I spent getting the 2 GB video card upgrade, and I find myself running into similar problems I encounted on my old PC when I upgraded from Windows 98 to XP! (DVDs wouldn't play smoothly on that machine and I new drivers, etc. never helped!)

I should be so pleased with my Core i7 machine right now, but I'm getting desperate for some updates that will finally start addressing this problem, I had more fun with my Dual Core 20" iMac from a few years ago :-(

Macbookjimbo wrote:

Mark, not that I'm glad you're having trouble too but it is good to know it's not just the mini. Hopefully Apple is working on a soon-to-be-released fix. Last night I ran one more test. I had bought a couple of episodes of "Star Trek" many years ago. This is the original series from the 1960's. Needless to say, it's not HD. I played that back as all of my previous tests have been HD media. Well it stuttered in all the same places too. So it doesn't seem to matter which type of video I play - as long as it's video of any type, it stutters.

Video Stutter/Sticking - Not Smooth