Can video display performance equal native Mac performance?

R

rfmeredith

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System: MacBook Pro, OSX 10.5.2, 2.4 Hhz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM with 2 GB allocated to Parallels, 1920x1200 screen, GeForce 8600M GT. Parallels 3.0 Build 5582, Windows XP Pro.

My business is video. I got this MacBook with Parallels expecting to be able to run video on both platforms. I can run HD video at 25 mb/s using VLC Player on my Mac OS and it looks stunning. I can play the same files on my Dell PC with Windows Media Player, also beautiful quality. But it can't run smoothly in Parallels using either player. I set the hardware acceleration back one notch as suggested in another thread here and that does not help.

Running this kind of video is a real test for any display but I expected Parallels to be a totally transparent interface that takes advantage of all the power in the Mac. I thought if the Mac interface could handle it, and my other PCs can handle it, then Parallels could also.

Am I expecting too much from Parallels? If there is not a solution now, is there one forthcoming? Something that causes zero loss of performance on video display?

Or is Parallels only good for less demanding applications?
 
Think layers

a video app on WinXp on Parallels on Mac OS on Unix
means there is a lot going on

either boot directly into Windows on your Mac or use Mac OS video apps

and which MacBook ?

for video a static machine would be better than a portable

Hugh W
 
Hugh Watkins said:
Think layers
either boot directly into Windows on your Mac or use Mac OS video apps

...and which MacBook ?
Hugh W
Click to expand...
How do I boot directly into Windows? Boot Camp? Does that require a separate installation of Windows or can I somehow use the same install I did for parallels?

Which MacBook - MacBook Pro, 17" 1920x1080 screen. Specs are at the beginning of my post.

Regarding a static machine being better for video... Yes of course... I am running Avid software on a large PC workstation with Dual 24" monitors, an FX3500 video card and an 8-drive RAID for media storage. I want to use the MacBook for supplementary apps and for showing my work. I am currently using Mac-native apps but sometimes PC apps are just a better solution for some things, so I am exploring how to get the most out of Windows on the Mac. There must be a way to get top performance from the Windows video display.
 
This is old information, but I've found the video perfromance in Parallels to be about 2/3 the performance of the real hardware using openGL. This relates to the layers Hugh was talking about. The more layers between your software and your hardware the slower things get.

The big catch is Parallels though, is that they **only** supports openGL. Most video apps in Windows are using DirectX, which defaults to software (100x slower) mode. If you can force your video app to use openGL mode you should see decent performance in Parallels.

Also be aware: At 25mb/sec video you really want your video to be on a seperate hard drive from both OSs. (i.e. put your video on a drive that neither MacOS is booting from or Parallels is using to store its .hdd files). Each OS has hard drive usage overhead and it could be that your disk can't keep up.

Edit: If this is a Macbook pro then you only have one hard drive in it. Try the same test with your video on a Firewire drive.
 
Hugh Watkins said:
a video app on WinXp on Parallels on Mac OS on Unix
means there is a lot going on
Hugh W
Click to expand...
I must have missed something in Parallels promoptioinal material. I don't recall that ever being mentioned. I thought the whole idea was that Windows can now run natively due to the Intel chip, and the days of layers were over. Seriously, with Parallels does Windows actually run as a layer on top of OSX?
 
unused_user_name said:
Edit: If this is a Macbook pro then you only have one hard drive in it. Try the same test with your video on a Firewire drive.
Click to expand...
My video is on a 7200 rpm external drive connected via Firewire 800. However, I have also run the same video from the internal drive on OSX with very little difference in performance. The 7200 rpm external is a bit better, but not by much.
 
rfmeredith said:
I must have missed something in Parallels promoptioinal material. I don't recall that ever being mentioned. I thought the whole idea was that Windows can now run natively due to the Intel chip, and the days of layers were over. Seriously, with Parallels does Windows actually run as a layer on top of OSX?
Click to expand...

It is running natively on the Intel chip due to hardware based support for virtual machines, however your graphics chip, your disk controller and other parts of the machine do not have that support.

Anything that is CPU bound runs at native speeds. Other I/O such as disk, network, keyboard, and usb, etc. are all using software emulation layers in order to work. This does not usually cause a slowdown as all of these items are very low bandwidth compared to the CPU, so software can easily keep up.

With video we have this strange half-nativeness. Video is high bandwidth enough that CPU emulation is not as fast as real hardware. On Windows XP, the Parallels tools allow OpenGL passthrough (i.e. it uses the real hardware but with a performance hit) however all other video (such as direct X, or any video under Linux) runs at software emulation speeds. Software emulation mode for video can be though of as if you are running the video through an old early 90's video card.
 
Thanks, that makes sense. So the short answer to my original question is "No."
Do these lmitations also apply to Windows running under Boot Camp? And, I assume if I want to use Boot Camp I can't use the Windows I installed under Parallels (?)
 
Boot camp IS running the installation natviely. Its exactly the same as running XP on a dell.

You can run the same XP installation in both BootCamp and Parallels at the same time. Chapter 14 of the User Guide tells you how to set it up.
 
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