MacBook :: Video Playback (Free RAM / CPU Core Dropped)
Sep 10, 2010
I have two identical Late 2008 Unibody MacBooks. I think that one of them is trying to commit suicide. The other one is completely fine, and has none of these issues. They have a 2GHz Intel Core Duo processor with 2GB 1067MHz DDR3 RAM. The HD is 150 GB and is less than half full. I get beach balls while browsing non-flash sites, and the computer is laggy in general. When I watch video (usually flash), after about 10 minutes, the video will pause, while the sound continues. After 30sec-2min, the video will fast forward to catch up, and the cycle continues. The free RAM in Activity Monitor will drop to <100MB, and the CPU usage will spike on one core of the processor, while the other core drops.
The fans are working appropriately, and the temp isn't exceptionally high. Once this starts happening, I have to quit Safari and restart to get the free RAM to drop back to normal levels (~1GB). I have tried: repairing and verifying disk permissions, resetting PRAM and SMC, Archive & Install, and finally an Erase & Install of Leopard. Nothing has improved the issue. I've MRoogle'd and Google'd to no avail. Is there anyone who can provide another solution? I'm not sure if it's my RAM, or HD dying, or both? The Apple Hardware Test says that everything is peachy.
I purchased it in June and have had this issue from the start. I am getting some artifacting/ghosting effects on the screen at times when watching videos. It happens 3-4 times during an hour or so of playback and resolves itself within a few seconds each time. The effect looks similar to that of poor encoding or something along those lines which is what I thought it was at first, until I tried playing videos that I knew for a fact didn't have this problem. The video pretty much freezes or colors get inverted in some areas, but the audio is not affected. Let me know if you need any additional details.
I have had my black macbook for a little over 2 years it is a c2d 2.16. It has ran flawlessly until recently it has been freezing during video playback. Mostly during online streaming like hulu or netflix. The screen usually gets these little red or green dots all over it when it happens. A couple times the the sound continued but usually it stops. What is going on? It has happened almost every day for a couple weeks now. I am running the latest version of OSX
I'm using a 15" 2.33 GHz Intel Core Duo Macbook Pro, with 3GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM, with Snow Leopard. Western Digital 320GB 7200 drive.
I've recently been having video playback issues, starting within Final Cut Pro. The clip will play fine at first but then stutter and freeze on and off. I have to constantly stop and play to get through it.
When playing DVDs on the Apple Air USB DVD player, the video can get quite jumpy when the screen image is complex. Pans are especially challenging. This is when the computer is driving a 1920X1200 external monitor.
Just noticed that when I'm lying on the bed with my MBA on my legs, watching so [URL]videos....it starts skipping in about 10-15 minutes.
I don't see core shutdowns.....but actually the video/audio is going to desync and starts skipping....is this normal? Do I have to get a MB/MBP just to watch Hulu and flash videos?
I think this may be related to the temperature, but usually it's not that hot.
I often have 720p MKV video to watch, and I was wondering whether the current generation base model MacBook White is capable of playing them. I know that the MacBook White has the 9400m GPU which should be capable of doing it, but does it work in reality? What software do you need?
I am a new Mac user and so far I love it! My biggest concern is the quality of video playback when I am watching a DVD movie. On my Old HP laptop, the quality was far better. Is there an issue with playing DVD's, or does it have to do with the screen resolution of the MBP (1440x900)? As far as still pictures go, the screen looks great! Its just video that doesn't look the best...
I'm trying to figure this out and I've gone through 'Energy Saver' settings and turned off 'Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible' but sometimes - not reliably, playback of a video file just pauses and then resumes as normal after about 10 seconds. It happened just the same with QT and Perian under Leopard and now happens in Snow Leopard too. Similarly, this sort of oddness happens with playback on VLC too.
I have a Rev A MBA but for the first time I just downloaded a TV show from Itunes and tried watching it back. It was very jumpy, freezing and video and audio were sometimes out of sync. I turned off all other applications, which improved it, but did not solve it. I tried downloading a second one and had the same problem.
Is this common? I would have thought of all applications to work well, Itunes should be one of them.
I've been having an issue with my Macbook Pro (early spring 2009 model) with colored lines appearing during video playback, moving windows around, etc. It seems to have involve movement. The same lines appear on my Apple 24in. display when it's connected via mini-display port. Please see the attached screenshot for an example...
Have noticed of recent that when i am watching movies on my laptop (avi's) after about 30 min the movie will freeze. at first i thought it was the file but trying files that i have known previously to work i have found that they also freeze now.
i have also noticed that when trying to upload files via FTP they will freeze half way and timeout.
i have run disk verify, and it has come back fine have tested the RAM using techtool pro and that also came back fine.
The output sound is suddenly really quiet. I have to turn it all the way up to hear anything all all sometimes. My iTunes seems fine and my notification sounds work, but playing videos is seriously sketchy (from YouTube, Hulu, Facebook, wherever).
I've got a 15" Macbook Pro OS X 10.8.5 2.2 GHz processor Intel Core i7 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 memoryÂ
If you go to: [URL] or any HD youtube,... the video is laggy on my 2.0 MB unibody. I know it's not my internet connection problem as my MBP 2.4 Unibody is playing fine. Should I download firefox? Does anyone out there with the same laptop has the same problem?
Real Player is not working properly.It downloads videos but when I click "play" ,it doesn't reproduce the video. I tried resetting Real Player but nothing happens.
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), Processor 2.4, Intel core 1.5 - memory
I'm debating between the 1.4 and 1.6ghz 11.6" macbook air.
For most activities I do, I'm thinking the faster disk access is more important than the CPU speed. I currently have a 2009 13.3" Macbook Pro, 2.26ghz.
The only thing I've noticed that I really need a fast CPU for is watching video, 720p or 1080p especially flash video.
Can the 1.4ghz display smooth 720p video from VLC or Youtube (flash)?
I have a 2008 15" 2.4GHz unibody macbook pro with the Nvidia 9400 & 9600 GPU's. It works great, but i notice when playing 720p HD video in Quicktime X, the video is often kind of stuttery at first when i skip through the video, and sometimes beachballs. I am disappointed, because i often like to skip to certain parts in videos (especially TV Shows/Movies). It doesn't do this with smaller videos.
I only have 2GB of RAM. Do you think upgrading the RAM to atleast 4GB would help with this problem? I am on the 9600 with the "Higher Performance" option. Do you notice this at all?
I've seen many saying that they have payback problems on youtube watching HD videos. But my problem is that the video that I'm streaming, regardless of quality, will often stop while streaming [however the audio continues], then all of a sudden the video fast forwards to catch up to the audio that it is currently playing.
I noticed that all the flash videos played inside Safari on my MBP were slow and choppy when switching to full screen mode. This started happening after upgrading to Flash 10.1 r85. I disabled hardware acceleration on Flash's settings, and video playback went back to normal.
What can I do to use hardware accelerated Flash, but without the slowdowns?
My PowerMac plays most small videos (640p) on YouTube just fine, as well it does an OK job at playing slightly larger videos in Quicktime. I would like to not have to worry about Flash any more. With the new 10.1 beta 2 I notice a nice boost in performance, almost tolerable. If I install a graphics card that supports Core Video will it free up the CPU? How can I tell if a card supports Core Video? As well, what cards do you recommend? Is it difficult to flash a graphics card to work with OS X Tiger in a PowerMac G4?
I have a weird problem that I'm hoping to solve. I have the most recent revision of MacBook Pro 15" with a Core i5 processor in it. I use it mostly in a desktop configuration with a 24" Apple Cinema Display.When I boot the MBP without the cinema display, there are large horizontal lines that appear after boot, and there's nothing I can do. Sometimes they are alternating black and white lines, sometimes different shades of blue. Sometimes shades of red. In all instances, I cannot do anything except force power off the laptop.
For about a month now I noticed that whenever I'm watching a video on YouTube in HD or when I'm watching a movie trailer on Quicktime at 1080p, the playback lags. Prior to this everything worked well. All the videos I watched played smoothly at any resolution at any quality. I have an iMac with the following specs:
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4 GB of DDR2 SDRRAM ATI Radeon HD2600 Graphics Card with 256 VRAM
Also, I do not have many windows or applications open when I watch these videos. I have also close to 21GB of hard disk space used up out of about 280.
Like a lot of you, I've been holding out for the new MacBook Pro's. Today was the day. I almost sprung for the 15" Hi-Res but decided to go all out and buy the 17" with the 1920x1200 screen. I've owned pretty much all of the Mac notebooks since the PowerBook days (12", 13", 15", and 17") and there is something about the 17" that sets it apart from the rest. It is hands down the sexiest 17" notebook on the market today. I just love it.
I have a Mac Pro 1,1 with two displays and an NVIDIA 8800 card. I was booted into Windows 7 using bootcamp, the machine froze during video playback, hard rebooted. Blue Screened in Windows, went to restart into OS 10.5.7 and I get the Apple logo and spinning gear, it then flashes briefly and goes to a grey screen. The second monitor never engages. The machine is fully booted as I can connect to it with my laptop through filesharing. I've tried PRAM/SMC reset, removing all the RAM/all external devices, pretty much everything. I've even tried replacing the video card and switching PCI slots, with the same issue still occurring.
This is question is being posted in the Mac OS & System Software because I couldn't find Quicktime under Windows software. Quicktime Player works fine under XP Pro on one PC and my other XP Pro computer has Quicktime Pro. MOV video is washed out running with Quicktime Pro but also Realplayer's playback is washed out. All other image files display fine.
I have a 20-inch Mid 2007 iMac with 2.4 intel core duo with 4gb memory running OS lion 10.7.4. I am getting choppy video with play back. I have tried resetting Safari, Uninstalling and reinstalling old and new versions of Adobe Flash. Am I SOL? Is my Processor to old? Can I upgrade it? Or do I need a whole new computer?