06-18-2010, 10:02 PM

Hey guys, I have a mkv 1080p, about 12gb movie file that I would like to be able to watch on my tv here at home (1080i). I was wondering if it would be a possibility to burn this movie onto a dvd by converting to a compatible format or something or if it would just be much more simple to buy a mini port adapter so that I can just hook up my mac straight to the tv.
Thanks

06-18-2010, 10:23 PM

Buy the adapter and save yourself possible headaches. That file won't even fit on DL media without some form of compression. Now if you had a Blue Ray burner....

Regards.

06-18-2010, 11:00 PM

Originally Posted by chscag

Buy the adapter and save yourself possible headaches. That file won't even fit on DL media without some form of compression. Now if you had a Blue Ray burner....

Regards.

ahhh blue ray burner would be nice but...$$ I think I might just go ahead and get the adapter. I've found some on ebay. In your opinion, do you think the quality would be good compared to if I would go to apple.com and buy one?

06-18-2010, 11:04 PM

I would suggest monoprice.com or amazon instead of ebay for practically all your cable needs.

06-18-2010, 11:05 PM

monoprice.com makes awesome adapters and cables that are really inexpensive. You might want to check them out. I buy from them all the time.

06-19-2010, 12:10 AM

Which MBP do you have? the 13" with the 320m or the 15" with the 330M?

If you have the 13", with that level of a file - if you don't have it, get Plex, and look thru the plex Blog and get the binary replacement that has hardware decoding (there are instructions on where in the app package to replace the existing file - it's a release from one of the devs to kind of show us all where they're heading with playback capabilities). They've done a really nice job with it using hardware acceleration on H.264 video; even video contained in mkv files. I don't see my 2GHz mini with a 9400m exceed about 60% (on a max of 200% if both cores in full use) with 1080p footage @30-35mbps with smooth playback.

06-19-2010, 02:48 PM

Originally Posted by bobtomay

I would suggest monoprice.com or amazon instead of ebay for practically all your cable needs.

Originally Posted by schweb

monoprice.com makes awesome adapters and cables that are really inexpensive. You might want to check them out. I buy from them all the time.

thanks, I'll check it out.

06-19-2010, 02:50 PM

Originally Posted by Nethfel

Which MBP do you have? the 13" with the 320m or the 15" with the 330M?

If you have the 13", with that level of a file - if you don't have it, get Plex, and look thru the plex Blog and get the binary replacement that has hardware decoding (there are instructions on where in the app package to replace the existing file - it's a release from one of the devs to kind of show us all where they're heading with playback capabilities). They've done a really nice job with it using hardware acceleration on H.264 video; even video contained in mkv files. I don't see my 2GHz mini with a 9400m exceed about 60% (on a max of 200% if both cores in full use) with 1080p footage @30-35mbps with smooth playback.

what is that? The movie plays fine on my mac as is- why do I need that? Just asking, don't mean to sound rude.

06-19-2010, 06:35 PM

Well, you may not need it. But, depending on how you play back, it may be using a lot of CPU power to do the playback. On some systems as bitrates get very high in video it can cause dropped frames and not-so-fluid playback causing annoying stutters. Personally I prefer hardware H.264 video decoding (in the case of playback on the computer, this means using the video card to decode and render the H.264 compressed material) as it tends to offer smooth playback even at extremely high bitrates. Software decoding tends to utilize a lot of CPU power depending on the source material and some people prefer to offload that work to the GPU if possible.

If you're not having a problem with stuttering then you don't need it, if you find that your video seems to have hiccups or stutters during playback then you need a way to use hardware acceleration.

Unless things changed in 10.6.4 that was just released, quicktime only does hardware acceleration on MP4/M4V/MOV that has H.264 video in it, which means other containers don't benefit from hardware decoding.

Here's a tidbit on hardware decoding: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

06-19-2010, 06:51 PM

Originally Posted by Nethfel

Well, you may not need it. But, depending on how you play back, it may be using a lot of CPU power to do the playback. On some systems as bitrates get very high in video it can cause dropped frames and not-so-fluid playback causing annoying stutters. Personally I prefer hardware H.264 video decoding (in the case of playback on the computer, this means using the video card to decode and render the H.264 compressed material) as it tends to offer smooth playback even at extremely high bitrates. Software decoding tends to utilize a lot of CPU power depending on the source material and some people prefer to offload that work to the GPU if possible.

If you're not having a problem with stuttering then you don't need it, if you find that your video seems to have hiccups or stutters during playback then you need a way to use hardware acceleration.

Unless things changed in 10.6.4 that was just released, quicktime only does hardware acceleration on MP4/M4V/MOV that has H.264 video in it, which means other containers don't benefit from hardware decoding.

Here's a tidbit on hardware decoding: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

oh I see, I'll keep that in mind if I ever see my video become choppy. Thanks for the suggestion.