[PD] problems with Intel MacMini playing video

[simon wise]

On 27 Jun 2007, at 1:27 AM, chris clepper wrote:

> What type of video files and at what size?  How many clips are  
> playing on one machine at the same time?  What is the display  
> resolution?  The Intel graphics have some problems above usual  
> desktop sizes and shader performance is really horrible too.

I'm using pix_movie to play .dv movies by asking for each frame in  
turn, so that I can scrub, pause etc with all machines in sync. It  
works well, except for the intermittent series of hesitations I  
assume are either dropped or late frames.

To debug this I switched to using a single machine, no network  
connections and tested using [auto 1( instead of frame-by-frame -  
only 1 clip playing in this simple setup. Then tried different codecs  
- H264, PhotoJPEG each 576x720 and 1024x768. The MacMini is connected  
to the 1024x768 projector via a short DVI cable. The GEM window is  
set to fullscreen, frame rate 25.

There was a slight improvement with the H264 at 576x720 but the problem  
was still there. Quicktime could play all the movies at fullscreen  
smoothly.

I have some other MacMinis - PPC and intel - coming soon so I'll test  
these and try higher framerates for GEM. The Intel ones have just  
been used with Isadora in a similar way and apparently had the same  
issue. The hesitation is only very noticeable on video with fast  
moving, high contrast scenes - but it is obvious then.

Pity about the shader performance - I was planning to use Minis for a  
more complex setup with masks and some colour correction but I guess  
I'll need to go with bigger boxes and better graphics cards (probably  
similar $$), or try to find some old G4 Minis.

Simon