[StillSchweiger]

I'm running xbmc 9.11 b1 on a Mac Mini 1,25 with Mac OS X 10.5

I have issues with playing videos from you tube (h.264) via the plugin. Here the video gets very slow but audio plays at normal speed. So the video is out of synch by 4-5 seconds and higher, In the video info OSD the error % has values above 2000% (don't know what error% means exactly)

It is clear for me that this is because of the weak performance due to the outdated hardware .

I figured out that when watching the same youtube video via Navi-x the video would be displayed fine but with a lower res. So I use this as a workaround, but I still have issues with other videos e.g. from ZDF mediathek.

How do you deal with h.264 or highres videos on your macs ? Any workarounds or tweaks ?

thanks for any feedback on this.

[Ulm01]

I have a similar setup, and also have trouble with h.264 video.

The only h264 video I have so far is in mkv files, which I seem to have trouble with in general under XBMC, since XVID mkv files also have issues, although not as severe. The big difference between the two is that h264 will not drop frames if behind, which causes the audio lag, while the xvid files will.

However, I don't think it's the hardware, since mplayer and vlc both play without a hitch at the same resolution, ~640x480. I think that maybe XBMC isn't using the altivec opcodes (SSE/3DNOW type commands for PPC) or that the mkv and/or h264 decoders aren't optimized. I might take a look through the source code (although I'm certainly not an expert, or even much of a programmer) and see what's what.

In the meantime, I'm using the playercorefactory.xml file to define an external handler for h264 and mkv files, and let mplayer take care of it. It's a bit clunky, but it works.

See this for details of the playercorefactory.xml file. The following is what I currently have in mine (/Users/username/Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata/playercorefactory.xml):

Code:

<playercorefactory>
  <players>
    <player name="mplayer" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
      <filename>/opt/local/bin/mplayer</filename>
      <args>-fs -quiet -ontop</args>
      <hidexbmc>false</hidexbmc>
    </player>
  </players>
  <rules action="prepend">
    <rule filetypes="mkv" player="mplayer"/>
    <rule filename=".*h264.*" player="mplayer"/>
  </rules>
</playercorefactory>

This takes any mkv files or any files with 'h264' in the filename and launches mplayer for them. I also tried a 'videocodec' rule so it would match 'h264' or 'avc1' codecs, but it appears not to work.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

ulm

I'm running xbmc 9.11 b1 on a Mac Mini 1,25 with Mac OS X 10.5

I have issues with playing videos from you tube (h.264) via the plugin. Here the video gets very slow but audio plays at normal speed. So the video is out of synch by 4-5 seconds and higher, In the video info OSD the error % has values above 2000% (don't know what error% means exactly)

It is clear for me that this is because of the weak performance due to the outdated hardware .

<SNIP>

How do you deal with h.264 or highres videos on your macs ? Any workarounds or tweaks ?

thanks for any feedback on this.

[Ulm01]

I have a similar setup, and also have trouble with h.264 video.

The only h264 video I have so far is in mkv files, which I seem to have trouble with in general under XBMC, since XVID mkv files also have issues, although not as severe.

BTW, when I say 'issues', I mean they play at ~20-30fps on a NTSC television (29.97 fps) video. For xvid it means lots of frame dropping to keep audio sync, while h.264 doesn't really drop frames, and the audio sync starts drifting badly. Both tend to use 90%+ CPU under xbmc, and ~50% cpu for vlc or mplayer for the same files.

Ulm

[StillSchweiger]

Ulm01 thx for the hint with the extrnal player. I was also thinking into this direction but didnt find anytime to figure out the correct settings for launching the external player.
Your post will definitely make it much easier for me. I ll give it a try

Have you already looked into this option:

<skiploopfilter>8</skiploopfilter>

I found it in this thread

Any experineces with that ?