Enabling AirPlay mirroring on an unsupported Mac

[pdjudd]

So that little company is apparently able to do what Apple did not: have it use one method for non-QuickSync machines, and QuickSync if it is available.

You are assuming that is what Apple wanted to do. Apple implementation is very specific and uses hardware for a specific solution. They felt it was much better. Forget that AirParrot is going to support QuickSync - the macs that we are talking about here would never use it anyhow. Apple's goal with AirPlay was to provide the most optimal solution. They wanted a solution that did not involve software and would be so dependent on so many variables - As makes that point by saying that it requires tweaking (without Quicksync). Apple didn't want to mess with all that.

You cannot assume that Apple was going for broad compatibility by any means. That is not what they do.

 

[Tinmania]

You are assuming that is what Apple wanted to do. Apple implementation is very specific and uses hardware for a specific solution. They felt it was much better. Forget that AirParrot is going to support QuickSync - the macs that we are talking about here would never use it anyhow. Apple's goal with AirPlay was to provide the most optimal solution. They wanted a solution that did not involve software and would be so dependent on so many variables - As makes that point by saying that it requires tweaking (without Quicksync). Apple didn't want to mess with all that.

You cannot assume that Apple was going for broad compatibility by any means. That is not what they do.

Uh, no. I stated a fact, not assumptions: they are going to do what Apple did not. The fact is Apple did not do that. It matters not what their reasons are.



Michael

 

[JordanNZ]

.

 

[deathbyedvin]

Any developers here?
I remember reading on a number of occasions that the developer previews of Mountain Lion had airplay mirroring supported on older macs, and as such they must've had a solution for running it without Quicksync.
Couldn't someone with the know-how extract that feature from an old developer preview and create some sort of native airplay mirroring experience for older macs?

 

[eagandale4114]

Any developers here?
I remember reading on a number of occasions that the developer previews of Mountain Lion had airplay mirroring supported on older macs, and as such they must've had a solution for running it without Quicksync.
Couldn't someone with the know-how extract that feature from an old developer preview and create some sort of native airplay mirroring experience for older macs?

I dont think there ever was a non-quicksync implementation ever.

 

[deathbyedvin]

I dont think there ever was a non-quicksync implementation ever.

I clearly remember reading that users with pre-2011 macs of different sorts was able to use airplay mirroring during the developer previews, and was quite bummed that this was disabled with the final release.

I'll see if I can find the post!

 

[deathbyedvin]

Found it! (Kinda at least.)

http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/17/airplay-mirroring-mac-os-x-10-8-mountain-lion/

The post in the comments by the user "Roko" from march 22nd supports what I wrote in my former post. He got it to work on a 2007 iMac during developer preview 2.

 

[bushido]

just get "AirParrot" it does the same mirroring works just fine on my mid2009 mbp to the appletv 3

 

[AtomicGrog]

What kind of games do you play over the huge latency (500ms+) inherent in the encode/decode process? That rules out anything that requires interactivity.

Maybe some turn-based strategy will be doable.

I call ********s.

Yes, not latency sensitive - Civ Rev looks great on a big screen.

 

[AzN1337c0d3r]

Yes, not latency sensitive - Civ Rev looks great on a big screen.

Making my point exactly. Civ Rev is a turn-based strategy.

 

[QuarterSwede]

Making my point exactly. Civ Rev is a turn-based strategy.

Somewhat different but Airplaying Real Racing 2 on my 4S works wonderfully (I'm actually better on the TV than on the phone). There really isn't a noticeable latency issue. That's not a Mac, but latency is my point not resolution/complexity of the graphics.

 

[AtomicGrog]

Making my point exactly. Civ Rev is a turn-based strategy.

It may be turn based but it still chews significant resources - Thankfully I have a great machine to run it.

I somewhat think your point is mute, the challenge is why cant we have airplay mirroring based on software encoding rather than rely on the hardware in the latest generation of processors.

The answer is simple, it's easier for companies/developers to rely on the hardware capabilities exposed via interfaces/libraries than develop in software.

The same can be said of later cuts of OpenGL, DirectX and a who bunch of other capabilities - you get the best with the latest technology and without it the software equivalent comes in as a pale alternative and very resource intensive.

That's not an Apple specific quirk, it's pretty much across the whole IT industry.

 

[AzN1337c0d3r]

Somewhat different but Airplaying Real Racing 2 on my 4S works wonderfully (I'm actually better on the TV than on the phone). There really isn't a noticeable latency issue. That's not a Mac, but latency is my point not resolution/complexity of the graphics.

The latency is related to the resolution though. More pixels to encode = more latency.

Plus all the Youtube videos I saw of iPhones + Airplay mirroring have a very noticeable latency that I wouldn't dare dream of playing anything fast-paced on it.

It is possible that Real Racing 2 is a slow enough game where it is not enough to really affect gameplay. Can't confirm since I don't have an iDevice.

Anyways, if I can see it on a Youtube video, it is definitely large enough to bother me on anything that I like to play: Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Modern Warfare 3.

 

[AzN1337c0d3r]

your point is mute

I've seen so many people use the wrong word here so I'm going to have to correct it here. The correct word is moot - of little or no value, not mute - silence.

The answer is simple, it's easier for companies/developers to rely on the hardware capabilities exposed via interfaces/libraries than develop in software.

Software can emulate hardware. It's often easier for companies to write their own software rather than wait for hardware companies to expose capabilities. However, when such capabilities are exposed, companies often take advantage of them, but not neglect all the other users in order to force them to upgrade.

The same can be said of later cuts of OpenGL, DirectX and a who bunch of other capabilities - you get the best with the latest technology and without it the software equivalent comes in as a pale alternative and very resource intensive.

OpenGL and DirectX are not hardware-accelerators at all... they are software APIs. Anyways, 3D graphics acceleration cannot be done reasonably in software, but Airplay mirroring can.

That's not an Apple specific quirk, it's pretty much across the whole IT industry.

Breaking backwards compatibility is very much an Apple quirk. Very few computer software companies release products that rely on hardware features that can be reasonably emulated in software.

----------

Just before you spout off the "Software encoding uses too much CPU", I will link here again the x264 developer who was playing Call Of Duty in 2010 via software video encoding.

 

[AtomicGrog]

Just before you spout off the "Software encoding uses too much CPU", I will link here again the x264 developer who was playing Call Of Duty in 2010 via software video encoding.

Your referencing someone using a i7 achieving an approximate 10ms time to encode a 800x600 frame with a 'veryfast' i.e. speed over quality setting..

Presumably you consider going to 1080p i.e. 1920 x 1080 with a higher quality settings (as is the case with my airplay output) with a slower (core2duo) processor whilst running a similar graphics intensive game viable based on that report?

I would suggest that running call of duty at the same settings as an i7 machine (with it's appropriately matched graphics card) on your core2duo as somewhat of a challenge regardless of the wish to stream.

 

[AzN1337c0d3r]

Your referencing someone using a i7 achieving an approximate 10ms time to encode a 800x600 frame with a 'veryfast' i.e. speed over quality setting..

I suggest you read the comment thread over the next time you post.

There isn't all that much quality difference between "veryfast" and "veryslow". Anyways x264 quality is generally considered by most to be superior to Quick Sync.

Here’s some results on my 1.6Ghz Core i7 with the following commandline on a low motion source:

x264 videos/720p50_mobcal_ter.y4m –preset veryfast –tune zerolatency –intra-refresh –fps 25 –vbv-maxrate 5000 –vbv-bufsize 200 –slice-max-size 1500 -o /dev/null

With sliced threads as per above: 53.96fps

For reference, if we toss sliced threads and use regular threads with 6 threads total (5 frames of latency), we get 89.27fps.

This means that 720p25, 720p50, 1080p24, 1080p30 are not at all unreasonable with zero latency on a desktop Core i7 system (which would be much faster than my laptop). Furthermore, I’m running 32-bit, and 64-bit is an extra ~15% faster. Even 1080p60 might not be out of the question on a good enough system.

He is running the i7-720QM which is the slowest of all the laptop quads that Intel put out in 2010. In fact, it's probably slower than some of the faster dual-cores that featured in the 2009 Macbook Pro.

Definitely all the iMacs going back to 2008 would be faster than the i7-720QM.

If he can do 90 FPS @ 720p on a laptop, my desktop with it's C2D @ 3.0 GHz and Radeon HD5830 can easily handle it.

 

[QuarterSwede]

The latency is related to the resolution though. More pixels to encode = more latency.

Plus all the Youtube videos I saw of iPhones + Airplay mirroring have a very noticeable latency that I wouldn't dare dream of playing anything fast-paced on it.

It is possible that Real Racing 2 is a slow enough game where it is not enough to really affect gameplay. Can't confirm since I don't have an iDevice.

Anyways, if I can see it on a Youtube video, it is definitely large enough to bother me on anything that I like to play: Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Modern Warfare 3.

It's a racing game (think Gran Turismo) so it's anything but slow and requires accurate timing to be successful. I simply haven't seen latency issues that would affect anyone but hardcore gamers, and at that FPSs only

 

[Quotenfrau]

enable AirPlay Mirroring on pre-2011 Mac Hardware. How?

Hi

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT5404?viewlocale=en_US

Supported Macs

AirPlay Mirroring in OS X Mountain Lion takes advantage of the hardware video encoding capabilities of 2nd and 3rd Generation Intel Core processors. Hardware video encoding allows AirPlay Mirroring to efficiently deliver high frame rates while maintaining optimal system performance. The following Mac models have processors that support AirPlay Mirroring:

iMac (Mid 2011 or newer)
Mac mini (Mid 2011 or newer)
MacBook Air (Mid 2011 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)

I own a 2010 iMac 27". Howto enable AirPlay Mirroring in OS X Mountain Lion? Hack?

 

[heisenberg123]

+

mac that meets the spec requirment

 

[Quotenfrau]

I don't like reading so many sites of discussion. Do I understood right that I need to buy AirParrot:

AirParrot - Single User $9.99
AirParrot Single Seat License - AirPlay your 's screen to AppleTV, wirelessly. (Mac Only)

or is there other solution?

 

[Tinmania]

I don't like reading so many sites of discussion. Do I understood right that I need to buy AirParrot:



or is there other solution?

That is about it right now.



Michael

 

[Prime85]

i have tried my AirPlay and compared it with AirParrot. The quality of picture and sound seem to be the same with both. AirParrot also gives the benefit of using the TV as a second monitor instead of just mirroring.

So even if you do have an older mac that doesn't support Airplay you arnt missing out since AirParrot works just as well.

 

[Quotenfrau]

So even if you do have an older mac that doesn't support Airplay you arnt missing out since AirParrot works just as well.

but Airplay is included in OS X and AirParrot needs additionally be paid. It's not Open Source or free as in free beer

 

[east85]

but Airplay is included in OS X and AirParrot needs additionally be paid. It's not Open Source or free as in free beer

OH well, it's a lot cheaper than buying a brand new Mac.

 

[pdjudd]

Hi

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT5404?viewlocale=en_US



I own a 2010 iMac 27". Howto enable AirPlay Mirroring in OS X Mountain Lion? Hack?

There is no hack. You cannot hack to add hardware features your Mac lacks.