INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 18 for Windows => Topic started by: packux on June 30, 2013, 09:57:59 am
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Lately I've been investigating different options for a future set-up. One of these options is to use Metric Halo LIO-8 as part of my set-up. The main issue though is that the firewire interface of MH only works in MacOSX and not in Windows.
One potential solution I thought of was setting up a high performance PC (something like hasswell, Nvidia GTX 770, loads of RAM, SSD) and install hackintosh on it. Then, I could use Vmware (or Parallels), install a windows 7 and run there JRiver. The main reason for that is that I am using JRiver for both music and video re-production and I find madvr to be one of the best, if not the best, of its kind of software.
Any experiences from other people using JRiver within vmware for movie viewing (using red october hq)?
Thanks a bunch
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Such virtualization solutions generally don't work well with any 3D applications, like an advanced video renderer.
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Yeap, thought as much :-( .
Another question then: Should we expect/hope for a video renderer implementation in MacOsX similar to Windows? :-D
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Doubtful Mac OS X is going to get anything like madVR.
It may one day get video support with a basic renderer, but nothing advanced like madVR, unless some 3rd party has something in store that can be reused (like madVR on Windows).
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Parallels generally seems to do better when it comes to 3D acceleration, but as nevcariel says, I don't think you will have much success using madVR inside a VM.
I would probably avoid any hardware that relies on Firewire - it's pretty much a dead interface these days now that even Apple have dropped it from their machines.
It may one day get video support with a basic renderer, but nothing advanced like madVR, unless some 3rd party has something in store that can be reused (like madVR on Windows).
My guess would be that Media Center will use CoreVideo if they add video playback to the Mac version.
Programs like Media Center and things like LAV Filters and madVR are one of the reasons I'm using Windows these days.
The main applications that I relied on, on my Macs were actually multiplatform (Photoshop, Lightroom etc.) so there was little actually tying me down to that OS, other than preferring the workflow I had there.
But OS X has been gradually moving away from "pros" ever since 10.5 and has been "simplifying" the OS ever since, in ways which breaks a lot of how I liked to work in the OS. (Mission Control is a poor substitute for the old Exposé and Spaces, Fullscreen apps kill off multitasking etc.)
10.9 looks to add a few more "pro" focused features back (and for the first time, useful multi-monitor support!) but I haven't found anything lacking about my Windows setup these days. It's been pretty solid since Windows 7, and Windows 8 is even better.
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I use MC in Parallels Desktop 8 on a Sandy Bridge Macbook Pro for video regularly (it has lots of RAM, though, and I allocate 4GB to the VM, and it all runs on a big 512GB SSD).
I do not use ROHQ.
But ROST works pretty darn well. Parallels 8 even has a nice feature that it auto-detects Windows apps that go fullscreen and automatically switches the VM from the "coherence mode" to fullscreen mode (and back again after). It works nicely for playing video, so the top toolbar and dock don't remain persistent.
I don't know that they've absolutely, positively committed to doing video support for MC19 on the Mac, but I'm quite sure it is high on the list. While I don't think we'll see parity with madVR on the Mac-side (at least not anytime soon), the integrated rendering system in OSX isn't quite as troublesome as the one in Windows (though, certainly, both have their moments).