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- View this screencast for more info vimeo.com/2758185
Release 0.1.2: Meep meep!
I’m actively working on support for the Apple Remote (and after that other remote control options), but we had quite a spectacularly good development over the weekend that I wanted to share earlier rather than later. It turns out that a fellow named Andreas Öman (bless his heart) made available an experimental patch to ffmpeg back in September 2007 that provides impressive speedups for multi-core decoding of H.264 content. We’ve applied it to the ffmpeg sources we’re using and the results are nothing short of stellar. The infamous 1080p Planet Earth encode plays back much better on a mini, without audio dropouts and with far fewer frames dropped. It’s not perfect, but it’s *much* better.
Additionally (and perhaps more importantly), all other 1080p content I tried played back virtually flawlessly on my Mac Mini 2.0 GHz. This includes Kill Bill Vol. I (tried the last third), a Lost episode at 1080p, and cullman even tried a crazy 5GB .ts/H.264 format Lost episode.
Whereas without the patch the CPU load is concentrated in a single core (with non-slice encoded H.264 content, at least), with the patch the load seems to be distributed much more evenly between cores. The author claims a speedup of 20-30%, which doesn’t sound like much, but it appears to push the envelope far enough to provide a much better experience.
So without further ado, give this new version a try and let us know how it works for you.
N.B. The author does mention a lack of support for the MBAFF subtype of H.264 encodings - which apparently isn’t used all that much - so it’s possible (but fairly unlikely) that content that played without the patch is now broken.
63 Comments so far
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Great! I am very curious about the Apple remote support. Thanks a lot!
Wow, you guys are moving fast. Keep up the great work!
works great!!! little steps of improvement that make me happy!!
everytime my rss gets a new feed I rush to see whats the update
keep up the good work!
This is amazing.
If you get the Apple Remote to work this will be the perfect media center EVER!. I remember back in the day when i used Xbox to watch my media on. But during the years the CPU in the original xbox became too slow to handle HD content witch my 42″ plasma likes.
And now, we have the possibillity again, and with Mac Os X. It is just great! thanks!
I will try to donate some cash for you guys when i get my paycheck. Use them to buy some beers or something. 
Hi from Finland!
This update was great, but I’m still experiencing some dropped frames with 1080p x264 encoded material (2GHz C2D Mac Mini) especially with “full” 16:9 aspect ratio videos (1920×1080). Most of the “wider” 2:40:1 material (1920×800) plays smooth with no dropped frames. This is due to higher bitrate needed with 16:9 aspect ratio videos (more pixels). Hopefully FFmpeg can be tweaked even more and someday we can enjoy 1080p material worry-free with our Minis (or hopefully Apple updates the Minis ;)). You have done a great job so far! I’m looking forward to new updates and this project maturing so that I can replace all my MythTV frontends with XBMC.
Hi from Spain!
a friend of mine told me that you were undertaking the XBMC porting to OSX and I decided to give it a go since I never heard of this particular application.
This is what I was actually looking for! (only tried 0.1.1). I do hope you keep on releasing further versions with bugs fixed and new enhancements to get the best media center platform ever.
As to the performance fix, I am looking forward to testing it. In my opinion, the best media player for 1080p I have seen is VLC with the following setting on H264(Put the “skip-filter for H264″ to all in FFmpeg options). Without this, I cannot even think of playing 1080p on my mac. In any case, VLC is a media player, not a media center!
I do hope you get the same results with your recent fix as I see you work as a revolutionary application in line with all the software released by Apple.
I will try and raise as many bugs and enhancements as I can so that I can also contribute to this project.
Keep up the great work!
just to show my support; i think this osx xbmc port is a really great effort. i’m probably getting a mac mini especially for this project as i’ve been searching for a hd-capable replacement for my xbox that is actually *USABLE* (very hard to find it seems…)
I don’t want to sound too ungrateful, in fact I love the work you put into this and I looove XBMC (on my Xbox), _but_ I’m a little bit upset - no, make that very upset - about that damn pink screen problem. Why doesn’t that one get the highest priority? For a good numer of folks (me included) XBMC on OS X is not usable at all like that. Please, please, pleaaaaaase fix that bug, please!
@Elan, to improve h.264 playback speed at the expense of picture quality, disable the in-loop deblocker during decoding. FFmpeg does support disabling this via “skiploopfilter”, and this is in the FFmpeg settings for VLC and MPlayer, (and FFdshow under Windows). To slightly improve playback, without reducing picture quality as much, only disable the in-loop filter for b-frames.
You could also do what CoreAVC (closed source binary H.264 decoder codec) does and cheat on slow CPU machines by always automaticly disabling the inloop filter for all 1080p resolution videos but leaving it enabled for all 720p videos as it recused the percieved visual quality somewhat when disabled. Skipping the “inloop deblocking” filter should greatly increase the decoding speed of H.264 encoded video.
In MPlayer one does this via simply invoke with the option -lavdopts fast=1:skiploopfilter=all
Alternativly make it optional via GUI to “Always skip H.264 in-loop deblocking”, or better just “Always skip H.264 in-loop deblocking for B-frames”
@Rez, as Elan already noted it is not that the pink screen issue on Intel GMA 3100 is not a high priority, it is just that Elan does not have a a Mac with the Intel GMA 3100 hardware himself so it is therefor very hard to debug. I am sure that if you donated a Macbook with Intel GMA 3100 graphics to him then he will be able to fix the problem in no time
@iRAW, yes I know that. But the only thing concerning the pink problem I read on this blog was Elan’s request for some log dump from a GMA 3100 user. He got that, I didn’t hear any further news/progress on this, so: Is there anything else we GMA 3100 MacBook users can do to help fix the infamous pinky? I’m more than willing to help. (MacBook donations are out of the question though. Ain’t got the dough.)
@Rez, Elan said that they did not want to handle support/help in this blog but instead that uses should post about their problems in the forum. So Elan and D4rk as developers (and other users) have posted more about the pink/green screen issues on the forum:
http://www.xbmc.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=57
By the way, I am not sure if it will help (as I do not have X3100 graphics myself) but have you updated to Mac OS X 10.5.2 and then installed the Leopart Graphics Update 1.0 for Mac OS X 10.5.2?
why are there no updates to the Twitter Stream?
http://twitter.com/xbmc
can’t wait to have apple remote integrated in XBMC
@iRAW, the forum, ok. The link leads to the developer forum though. I think you meant to post that one: http://xbmc.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=56
10.52. and graphics update: Yes I did install them (the day they came out). Didn’t help.
Too bad about the pink problem on the new MacBooks. If XBMC worked on my MacBook, I’d gladly donate! Anything us GMA 3100 owners can do to help? Any debug info we can send in?
[...] información: OSXBMC Descarga: OSXBMC [...]
Does anyone else have problems with the sounds in x264 movies? I have this with both this and the previous release.
The ffmpeg performance improvements in this release are significant! I’ve just watched most of a 1080p movie on my 2.0Ghz Mac mini which dropped a lot of frames in 0.1.1, it’s looking great now.
I also noticed that a few movies which had previously been causing XBMC to crash are playing correctly now.
@Jasper: are you trying to use a regular stereo audio setup to watch these movies? XBMC doesn’t currently support “down mixing” of 5.1 channel audio to 2 channels so if you aren’t using a digital audio receiver, you’ll hear garbled sound. I think this is covered in the FAQ too.
I went ahead and replaced the XBOX on my shelf with the new mac mini the other day. I’m looking forward to being able to play my ISO and IMG dvd images (and VIDEO_TS) on this software, but otherwise I’ve been quite pleased.
I’m still noticing that the mac minis fan(s) get really excited when XBMC is just sitting in the menus. Curiously when playing content (even 720p) the fans are very quiet, but just sitting at the menu seems to heat it up a little too much.
Further donation is on the way from me..
fall-line: Thanks for clearing that out!
@ubi: Thanks for the detailed report. There’s no doubt that the Mac Mini is sitting right on the edge of being able to play 1080p content (mostly on the right side of the fence, I think). Hopefully we’ll be able to continue to make tweaks and enhancements.
@Rez: Would like nothing more than to look into it, I’m sure d4rk would as well. It’s hard to do so without hardware, as the logs that were sent didn’t show up anything obvious. We’ll keep plugging away, and I’m sure eventually we’ll figure out what the problem is.
@inloop: Brilliant! Thanks for the detailed post, I’ll be sure to incorporate these options.
@fall-line: Looking into ISO/IMG playing is definitely on the list! Hopefully I’ll get a chance to look into it shortly.
@Elan, just note that inloop deblocking is apart of the H.264 specification so users may experince blocking artifacts on some videos, so it would be great if it for now could be enabled and disabled from the GUI (obviosly not on-the-fly in the OSD when playing but from within the normal video settings in XBMC), later maybe some kind of intelligense could be implemnted that only enable it on machines with CPUs too slow for 1080p try to play native 1080p videos (something like enable skiploopfilter if horisontal pixel resolution > 1900 and processor is slower than a 2Ghz Core2 Duo).
Again, the best compomise will probabaly be to just “Always skip H.264 in-loop deblocking for B-frames” and only enable skiploopfilter for all frames in extreme cases, but I guess that it is something that have to be tested over several months on many different Macs and H264 encoded videos to find the optimal compomise.
There are more tips and tricks to speed up decoding.
See “2.2 General Questions” the MPlayer FAQ (MPlayer uses FFmpeg):
http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=MPlayer_FAQ
@elan Someone in the forum discovered the scripts for the scrapers are not the same. It could be that you’re using a different one than the current SVN?
I tried replacing them as well with the ones from the last SVN to see if I could get OSXBMC to scrape covers and info but it didn’t work. It still freezes and coredumps with a malloc.
Would you be able to generate a debug version that can generate more debug info to system.log? I find it weird nobody else is complaining about this.
I did post it in the forum but it must be said, the forum still needs to find its legs. At the moment we have Linux users giving the wrong advice while in the same post making it clear they’ll never be caught dead using a mac, so it’s not that useful just yet (I’m trying to help with what I can)
Yes, wow!
“MacBook gma950 2gig ram and 2gig CPU”
Hi all,
just got home after a long day…. as I said this morning, I was dying to test it and…
YESSSS! what an improvement!
All the 1080p movies I have got run even better than on VLC with the skip filter option enabled.
I realized you have an OSD if you press I, so I could appreciate some frames being dropped (30 every 15 or 20 seconds) with certain movies like Open Season at 1920×1080 or Transformers on the fastest scenes, but you cannot appreciate this effect unless you pop up the OSD…
Platform: Macbook Core 2 Duo 2GHz 2GB RAM.
I guess you could more performance introducing the skip filter option as VLC does.
Apple remote feature would make this even better…
I cannot wait until your next release!!!
Many thanks for sharing this with all the Mac Community!
I’ve only been using the XBMC on the xbox for a little over half a year now, but already I’m hooked. That last step to HD level decoding is a huge one, and this process sounds like exactly what I’m looking for. I’ve been eyeing the mini for well over a year, and this might be my tipping point.
On the other hand, as hesitant as I am when it comes to change, I’ll probably wait until we hit 0.2.0. That’s what I get for being a ‘fraidy cat.
Anyway, I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you. This is possibly the coolest thing ever.
@elan, I dont know if anyone noticed but a fair amount of SPAM bots seem to be filling the Trac with adverts (Example http://dn-0.com/xbmc-trac/ticket/64) its kinda annoying, could someone maybe add a CAPTCHA challenge response?
I know this is not the really pace but I just like to add that I love the Mac mini design and I would deffinitly buy one just for XBMC if it was not for the slow CPU, so does anyone here know when or if Apple will release a new model with a faster CPU? Maybe they will stop selling Mac minis soon?
I think that Apple will wait to release the Mac mini until the next Mobile Intel Processors (Montevina) becomes available for mass production, which will hopefully be in June 2008 and be called “Centrino 2″
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/02/18/next-mobile-intel-processors-montevina-due-in-june-2008/
http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20080218PD210.html
if so then that should make the next low-end Mac mini have at least a 2.26Ghz processor (with a 1066MHz Front Side Bus) which if it is the case is great news
hopefully the next Mac mini will have a better graphics chip as well, that being the Intel Mobile 45 Express chipset (code-named Cantiga; GM45, GS45 or GL40) with Intel’s GMA X4500 graphics technology and ICH9M southbridge, that graphics core is expected to be clocked at 475MHz which will contain ten unified shaders, up from the GMA X3100’s eight
it should be noted that the current latest Intel Penryn processors have not yet been incorporated into Apple’s notebook line, despite persistent rumors of an imminent release so fingers crosses in the hope that Apple with release new MacBooks as well as new Mac mini models with those processors in June 2008
Thanks for the last release.
With my old mini core duo 1.66, it’s almost possible to run 1080p movie, it’s still a little bit jearky but it’s better than with VLC or mplayer (even with the skiploopfilter tweak).
But my 1080p movies run perfectly fine with coreavc and xp n the same mini (but i hate xp…)
I know that coreavc will lauch their player for osx the next month
[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] make fast option with h264 actually do something..
http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2008-February/042162.html
hi!
i tried xbmc in hopes that the playback of hd content would be smoother. to a large extent its working great, although most of my HD x264;720p files are in matroska file containers, and xbmc didn’t like to process the sound properly. when i play them back i get a really good/smooth picture but the sound sounds like some kind of hissy helicopter. I haven’t tried the new XBMC release yet, and i think this has to do with the codec that i am using.
the clips play with sound in vlc, but instead makes the video choppy.
has anyone else tried matroska files in xbmc?
i might also add that i am testing this on a box with a pent D 930 cpu (3ghz), 2GB ram and gma950, running leo 10.5.1.
Your work is very good, but the only defect is the audio ac3, in my macbook xbmc not hear ac3, digital noise, and analog silence (I have not receiver 5.1)
A greeting and congratulations by the xbmc.Diego
@krux & Diego, read the FAQ, it states that there is no software decoding and downmix support for AC3 nor DTS yet so you will not be able get analog audio output from those.
This got to be the number one request/question by now
Anonymous coward of “The Register” infamy?
Thanks for the update
I’m gonna test it!
one suggest : is it possible to move de skin folder from the application to user/library/application support/xbmc/user data ?
each time I download a new release I forgot this fact and erase my xtv skin…..
the skin/skins may sometimes have to be updated so I am not sure how wise it is not to keep the skin with the rest of the XBMC application, plus one skin should be able to be shared between multiple users :/
@jms_uk, no, I am a other anonymous coward
[...] software and custom Apple TV’esque skins for the project have already surfaced. First about that 0.1.2 update, it includes better dual-core support allowing for much smother 1080p playback with MPEG4 [...]
@jms_uk: “Anonymous Coward” is a generic phrase, pioneered by Slashdot many, many years ago for anonymous users unwilling to register. A lot of people have adopted as a way to clearly state they want to be anonymous.
@anonymous Coward: One option would be to mimic OSX’s behaviour. A version of PM3 may be always included in OSXBMC but the user’s directory be checked. If a newer version is found then that is used, if the user has a different skin defined then that is used. The “stock” skin is always included in the package as a fallback.
This is the way directory domains work in OSX and it’s pretty smart, to my eyes.
As an avid fan of XBMC running on 2 Xbox’s I am thrilled to see this project moving along. Any news on when ISO and IFO playing will be available? Thanks!
@Eduo, cheers bud.. cleared that little mystery up
Version 0.1.2 running great on an overclocked e6300 @2.8Ghz & DS3 v.1 mobo with 2GB of ram (Leopard 10.5.2 + EFI) with the cheap eVGA 8400GS vcard.
Highest variable bit rates played are ~7000kbits/sec, tested on both VC1 & H.264 and the CPU was ~65% each.
Great work guys! This is the best media center ever!
Forgot to mention that DTS and AC3 pass through works great on the Gigabyte DS3 on board SPDIF output. Sound is just amazing on my SONY receiver when playing 1080p .MKVs
Is anyone else experiencing double/triple speed playback?
H.264 MKVs files play way too fast on my 2ghz C2D Mac Mini. Any suggestions?
@Tufty
I am running into that issue as well. I have two MKV files H.264. One plays back at proper speed, but the audio is just rhythmic static. The second plays back at a very fast rate. Then if I go back to try the first MKV file again that one plays at a fast rate as well. The first files frame rate is fine as long as I don’t try that second file.
2.33 MacBook Pro
My playback is 2x aswell. So it’s unusable at the momemt, but hey it’s a beta
All I can say is awesome work. I have been using XBMC for years and knew I would need an alternative soon for playing my HD content - this is the answer! I have been running it on my older Macbook Core 2 Duo and it works awesome - eagerly awaiting each new update.
I tried some 1080p content - it seemed to work well, I’ll be donating soon I promise!
@Tufty, InStim and None. Check the FAQ, I just added the answer to your problem.
@eduo, your idea sounds good in theory, next question then though is how the skin version control should be handled, as currently the skin versions are only updated when the XBMC core code is changed enough to require chnages to the skin which has only been about once every 6-months or so to this date
you also have to remember that there are a whole lot more skins out there than the default PMIII
@Elan, playback looking sweet however I noticed that under the System Settings - video hardware, there is the option to switch aspect ratio (”Widescreen”, “Letterbox” etc.), however the value always seems to revert/default to “Letterbox” and on video playback the aspect ratio isn’t quite right when playing the same file with say, VLC (there are larger black bars on the XBMC version)
Is this normal behavior?
i guess i will have to try nitoTV in the meantime. heard it’s got good mkv-HD support..
Will come back to XBMC though when the kinks have been sorted.
cheers
Doesn’t that (nitoTV) just provide a front end to existing codec solutions (perian etc)? In which case it’s still restricted to the playback limitations those solutions have (which are many, and the chief reason why we’re all getting so excited about XBMC because its playback engine is still being written - witness the 0.12 enhancements for example)
@jms_uk well nitotv also uses mplayer which is apparently working well with mkv’s / HD.
although i haven’t tried perian 1.1 yet, so i have lots of different things to test when i get home tonight.
@Krux
Mplayer *seems* to offer a good solution on the surface, but when you start throwing more and more .mkv content at it, it simply isn’t upto scratch (DTS passthru is one area I know its still weak in) - if it worked as well playing .mkv as people are expecting there certainly wouldn’t be continued interest in XBMC, Perian 1.1, the latest VLCs or Coreplayer..
Truth is, at this time, and from first hand experience XBMC and VLC are really the most mature options out there at this time (CorePlayer Pro *could* change all that but no one knows yet)
FWIW, Perian 1.1 doesn’t quite fulfil on its promises either (check out forum posts on other websites to see what I mean)
Nope, the action’s here with XBMC at the moment.. a LOT of fingers are crossed that Elan and his team can continue to deliver on the excellent promise show so far
XBMC on OS X does not use MPlayer, it uses FFmpeg, but MPlayer also uses ffmpeg, so does Perian and VLC. So all their range codec support should be similar, however performance might be slightly difference depending on which FFmpeg tweaks are enabled inside each of those softwares. Meaning it is really FFmpeg that is the swiss-army knife of the free codec world
Project using FFmpeg: http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/projects.html
@elan Thanks for your reply. Your project is truly awesome and girlfriend friendly!
I can’t wait for osxmbc to be 100% solid. Any testing you want, let me know.
Got a nasty defect. Everytime I exit XBMC on my C2D Mac Mini I get a black screen and nothing more. I have to reboot the mini everytime. Anyone else have the same problem?
@ Mr T
i get the same problem sometimes. It will always happen though if i switch to Aeon theme and want to switch back to any other screen. It will Black Sceen of Death requiring a reboot.
Thats it. Its probably releated to Aeon theme. Thats what Im using. Ill try with a different theme. Thanks for pointing that out.
This is a pretty cool app for Iphone which might help with the remote issue
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/21/touchpad-turns-your-iphone-into-a-remote-trackpad/
The FAQ says this about the “fast video, no audio” problem:
“If you have a video (such as an MKV) with AC3 or DTS audio, you must use passthrough mode and connect the digital output to a surround receiver. In Setings -> System -> Audio Hardware, make sure Audio Output is set to Digital, and enabled both passthrough options.”
I’ve done that on 0.1.2 (it was the default), and still the problem persists. I didn’t actually connect the machine to a surround receiver yet, but that shouldn’t matter as far as the fast video is concerned? The file in question is a 1-minute sample of a Ratatouille 1080p Blu-Ray rip, x264/LPCM-FLAC.
Any idea about this? Otherwise, looking pretty sweet even on a 2GHz C2D Mac Mini, which I hope will suffice for 1080p video some day…
Also, the fans are oddly louder than normal when idling in the menus, even though the CPU usage is below 10%. Someone else seemed to have this problem, too.
BTW, some japanese guy has written a wickedly fast avc/h.264 decoder for Quicktime: http://www003.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mycometg3/ It’s open source, so while XBMC doesn’t rely on QT, maybe it could be of some help to people trying to tweak ffmpeg?
Jarkko: If XBMC gives the option, in the future, to use the native’s video subsystem (WM in Win, QT in Mac) then this would help both in places where the drivers take advantage of hardware acceleration and with highly-optimized platform-specific codecs like the one you mentioned.
In the same vein, being able to plug into quicktime might mean being able to play DRM’d files (I’m not sure about that, I assume it does).
Pretty cool, this project. I’m considering a Mac Mini as a HTPC for my living room, and I know XBMC from a friend of mine happily running it on his Xbox. So this combo makes me very happy!
Keep up the good work!