01-04-2011, 06:21 PM

Sup Guys,

My dad has a Mac Pro which he uses mainly for his design work. When he loads a dvd and plays it, every 2-3 secs it freezes for like a split second. Thus making it **** to watch a movie although having a glorious 30" cinema display!!
Does anyone know why?

Mac Pro's Specs:

-2 x 2.26 Ghz Xeon "Nehalem" ( 8-core, (16 virtual cores))
-10Gb 1033 Mhz DDR3 RAM (6Gb were stock configuration, added another 4Gb (2x2Gb) later on. These were placed into the correct slots according to the RAM install help thing)
-Two nVidia GeForce GT 120's (30" Cinema HD Display hooked up to the GT 120, in slot 1, directly into the dual link DVI port.)(Two 23" Full HD Acer screens hooked up to the second GT 120, in slot 2, one connected directly into the DVI port and the other connected through a MDP to DVI adapter from Apple).
-Stock 640Gb Western Digital drive, HDD bay 1, with the OS running of it (Approximately 400Gb free at the moment)
-1TB Western Digital Caviar Black in HDD bay 2. used for backups, approximately 600Gb free at the moment. Added that shortly after receiving the Mac Pro

Is this a GPU problem or maybe the disk drive?
I'd appreciate any feedback, a Quadro 4800/4000 arnt in the budget atm

BY THE WAY!!!!! THIS WAS A REFURBISHED MACHINE)!!!! FROM APPLE ONLINE STORE!!

Cheers

01-04-2011, 09:19 PM

A program such as VLC will help enormously.

01-05-2011, 06:30 AM

how would it help?? DVD Player, or Front Row are both laggy with DVD's. Whats different with VLC?? i stopped using vlc after installing the plugin thing for quicktime, quicktime is nicer to use.

01-05-2011, 09:26 AM

Does the same thing happen if he watches using a different account?

01-05-2011, 10:59 AM

good question. no idea, havnt tried. we only have 1 account set up.

01-05-2011, 01:12 PM

One thing that hasn't been mentioned, or I can't see it, is what sort of optical drive is in use. What does System Profiler tell you? Laggy movies can be due to a dirty laser lens, a poor internal connection, or a faulty drive mechanism. Do you have an external firewire optical drive you can use for testing?

Do give VLC another try, time and time again it seems to handle video better than Apple's proprietary applications. Have you in fact tried watching movies with Quicktime, the app you prefer?

01-06-2011, 07:15 AM

@hughvane
the optical drive in use is the standard one, which came with the mac pro. so what its 24x superdrive?? nope no external drive for testing. Dirty Laser lens, anyway to clean that? preferably without having to take apart the whole machine?
Does Quicktime play DVD's aswell?
Weird I played a movie before and it was completely smooth. started lagging like 30 mins later again.

01-06-2011, 08:51 AM

Adding a new user and trying from that is a troubleshooting step - do it.

01-06-2011, 01:32 PM

Originally Posted by The_Pro

the optical drive in use is the standard one ... 24x superdrive?

Apple has long been coy about revealing which brand of optical drive is used inside the Mac, but I fancy the Pro one is a Sony (someone will know).

Cleaning the lens is best done with a cotton bud and alcohol, but if that's not practicable then use a squirt or three of compressed air from a can, or buy/use a cleaning disk.

Does Quicktime play DVD's as well?

I believe so, a long time since I tried it, but the Pro version is the one I've used. You can but try it (which I cannot presently do with this old G3).

Weird I played a movie before and it was completely smooth, started lagging like 30 mins later again.

Which suggests to me that it's a hardware issue, but by all means try gsahli's recommendation of a new user account.

02-06-2011, 03:41 PM

back again

Sill nothing is smooth 1080p video from youtube is 100% smooth, 1080p video from from an external drive in quicktime is also 100% smooth, grrrrr. ive been looking around google, absolutely no info.
question: since the CD is 2560 x 1600, does dvd player or front row maybe not completely compatible with it