.flac and .mkv

[silverpig]

Virtually my entire music library is .flac. Virtually my entire movie library is .mkv. VLC deals with both formats just fine, but I want to use iTunes and Front Row.

I got a script called Fluke which allows me to drag my .flac files onto its icon and it then allows iTunes to play them (it doesn't convert them, it just modifies some header information I think). This allows me to play the files in iTunes, but editing tags and cover art doesn't work well, if at all. Furthermore, Front Row just won't play them at all. I've installed Perian and while that allows iTunes playback of .flac, it doesn't do anything for Front Row or the tags/art issue.

Is my only hope to convert all of my music over to apple lossless? I've tried it with a few albums and it works great, but I'd rather stick with flac. Is there some other kind of plugin I can try?

Also, VLC can play my .mkvs fine, but even after installing Perian quicktime can't. It starts to open the file then crashes every time. Front Row is also useless here.

I suppose I can deal with the music issue, but I'd REALLY like to be able to play the .mkvs in Front Row somehow.

 

[ViRGE]

How many MKVs have you tried with Perian installed? Quicktime is funky about the structure of MKVs, some of them just don't flat out work (and hence don't work under Front Row). I'd see if I could find a MKV that loads correctly, and work from there.

 

[silverpig]

I've tried a few... less than 5 I'd say. I'll just start trying some more.

 

[silverpig]

Gah, I reinstalled quicktime 7.5 and now it crashes every time I open it, whether I'm loading an mpg, avi, mkv or nothing.


edit: I got it to stop crashing on loading. I had to use Marvin's AMD utility to patch the CPUIDs in /system/library/quicktime.

Still no dice on the mkv stuff though.

Here's the first part of the error log

Process: QuickTime Player [1638]
Path: /Applications/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/MacOS/QuickTime Player
Identifier: com.apple.quicktimeplayer
Version: 7.5 (7.5)
Build Info: QuickTimePlayer-1490500~4
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [101]

Date/Time: 2008-08-08 08:42:08.604 -0700
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.4 (9E17)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00000000b5b5b5b5
Crashed Thread: 0

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x948d3a58 spin_unlock + 4

code attachment kinds sucks

 

[TheStu]

I just tested this on my MacBook.

I took a 720p rip of a TV show episode, done in MKV format, it opened in Quicktime (You have to make sure that it loads) and played, albeit a little stuttery. I made sure it was in my Movies folder in ~/home/Movies and then fired up Front Row. The file, once loaded again, payed smoother than it did on Quicktime. So... perhaps it is something that you did to get your hackintosh working (I would assume hackintosh since no Apple Macs have AMD chips).

 

[Kaido]

Dump Front Row and use Plex

http://elan.plexapp.com/

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: TheStu
I just tested this on my MacBook.

I took a 720p rip of a TV show episode, done in MKV format, it opened in Quicktime (You have to make sure that it loads) and played, albeit a little stuttery. I made sure it was in my Movies folder in ~/home/Movies and then fired up Front Row. The file, once loaded again, payed smoother than it did on Quicktime. So... perhaps it is something that you did to get your hackintosh working (I would assume hackintosh since no Apple Macs have AMD chips).

Yeah, I'm going to try it on my wife's macbook when I get a chance to. Unfortunately she's out of town and I won't be able to see her for a week or so.

And yeah Kaido, I'm gonna try plex

 

[ViRGE]

Ahh, you're on a Hackintosh? Are you using an AMD processor with SSE3 support?

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Ahh, you're on a Hackintosh? Are you using an AMD processor with SSE3 support?

Yep I'm on a hackintosh. AMD with SSE3, although I'm using an SSE2 only kernel.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Ahh, you're on a Hackintosh? Are you using an AMD processor with SSE3 support?

Yep I'm on a hackintosh. AMD with SSE3, although I'm using an SSE2 only kernel.

That could very well be the problem. All of the Intel Macs support SSE3, it's entirely possible that the Perian codecs are compiled to use it. I'd replace the kernel with a SSE3 kernel (if at all possible) and see what happens. You may also want to check out this utility

 

[KeypoX]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: TheStu
I just tested this on my MacBook.

I took a 720p rip of a TV show episode, done in MKV format, it opened in Quicktime (You have to make sure that it loads) and played, albeit a little stuttery. I made sure it was in my Movies folder in ~/home/Movies and then fired up Front Row. The file, once loaded again, payed smoother than it did on Quicktime. So... perhaps it is something that you did to get your hackintosh working (I would assume hackintosh since no Apple Macs have AMD chips).

Yeah, I'm going to try it on my wife's macbook when I get a chance to. Unfortunately she's out of town and I won't be able to see her for a week or so.

And yeah Kaido, I'm gonna try plex

On my hack, even though running vanilla and 100% compatible 3ghz Core 2 duo hack. It had issues running hd content. Though it was 1080p... Cars 1080p had some major issues with VLC.

 

[TheStu]

Huh, I think we need Tyranicus to chime in. He is running a Core 2 Duo hack that (if I recall correctly) plays back 720 and 1080p MKVs and MP4s with ease.

 

[Tyranicus]

Indeed. Everything I've thrown at it, including a few files that bring my MacBook Pro to its knees, have run smooth as butter on my desktop.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: KeypoX

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: TheStu
I just tested this on my MacBook.

I took a 720p rip of a TV show episode, done in MKV format, it opened in Quicktime (You have to make sure that it loads) and played, albeit a little stuttery. I made sure it was in my Movies folder in ~/home/Movies and then fired up Front Row. The file, once loaded again, payed smoother than it did on Quicktime. So... perhaps it is something that you did to get your hackintosh working (I would assume hackintosh since no Apple Macs have AMD chips).

Yeah, I'm going to try it on my wife's macbook when I get a chance to. Unfortunately she's out of town and I won't be able to see her for a week or so.

And yeah Kaido, I'm gonna try plex

On my hack, even though running vanilla and 100% compatible 3ghz Core 2 duo hack. It had issues running hd content. Though it was 1080p... Cars 1080p had some major issues with VLC.

Part of the problem is that all of the major Mac players (VLC, Mplayer, Perian) are using the same decoder: libavcodec. And while it's an impressive effort for an open source group, it's not a particularly great H.264 decoder, it's not significantly multithreaded, meaning you're effectively trying to decode everything with a single core. And in turn, 1080p is really more than a single core can handle. CoreAVC, Cyberlink, and even MPC-HC all do better in this respect.

One of the Google Summer of Code projects this year was a MP project for FFmpeg/libavcodec so hopefully things should be improving, but I have no idea when such code will be integrated.

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: Kaido
Dump Front Row and use Plex

http://elan.plexapp.com/

Or.. Boxee. I'm really liking that.

 

[Chris27]

Kmax, can you send me an invite to Boxee? According to their site, there is quite a backlog for their server to process.