2009-08-21, 15:44
I have an ATV and have been hacking away at it for a while to get support for my movies stored out on a NAS. So far, so good, got all the usual plugins but nothing gives me that wow factor in terms of a nice interface the family can use.
So I put on XBMC [9.04.1] (going the usual USB Creator / Launcher route - current build is May 26 2009, SVN 20677 according to the log, Launcher 3.1) and love the interface & skins etc... what I'm not liking so much is the playback of HD 720p content. I encode using Handbrake, settings for Apple TV bitrate set to 2500.
Having spent a fair while looking at it and trying different configs (802.11g, powerline ethernet and now 100mb cat-5) I decided to SSH into the box and take a look at cpu usage while playing back an h.264 movie. Playing using Sapphire (a media browser that, I believe, just uses the underlying Quicktime) the CPU is around 40% and everything is smooooooth, even high motion stuff.
Playing using XBMC, the CPU is in the 85-95% range and high motion breaks up and stutters from time to time. I know my links are fast enough (Sapphire can handle it) so what struck me as obvious, and perhaps a huge noob mis-conception, is can XBMC be configured to use Quicktime as its playback engine?
Yes, I realise ffmpeg supports far more codecs, but with Perian installed I'm not at a lack for codec support, I'm far more interested in getting a perfect playback experience... so is it possible or is it a complete no-no?
Has it already been done perhaps? Is there a better (as in more atv-centric) build of xbmc I should be using?
Thanks for any help, pointing and laughing welcome
So I put on XBMC [9.04.1] (going the usual USB Creator / Launcher route - current build is May 26 2009, SVN 20677 according to the log, Launcher 3.1) and love the interface & skins etc... what I'm not liking so much is the playback of HD 720p content. I encode using Handbrake, settings for Apple TV bitrate set to 2500.
Having spent a fair while looking at it and trying different configs (802.11g, powerline ethernet and now 100mb cat-5) I decided to SSH into the box and take a look at cpu usage while playing back an h.264 movie. Playing using Sapphire (a media browser that, I believe, just uses the underlying Quicktime) the CPU is around 40% and everything is smooooooth, even high motion stuff.
Playing using XBMC, the CPU is in the 85-95% range and high motion breaks up and stutters from time to time. I know my links are fast enough (Sapphire can handle it) so what struck me as obvious, and perhaps a huge noob mis-conception, is can XBMC be configured to use Quicktime as its playback engine?
Yes, I realise ffmpeg supports far more codecs, but with Perian installed I'm not at a lack for codec support, I'm far more interested in getting a perfect playback experience... so is it possible or is it a complete no-no?
Has it already been done perhaps? Is there a better (as in more atv-centric) build of xbmc I should be using?
Thanks for any help, pointing and laughing welcome