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[glynor]

I've been up to no good on my new Macbook...


Click to enlarge.

 

[MrC]

7.0?

[HTPC4ME]

My GF says "do elaborate please."

[glynor]

That is MC 16.0.168 running in Parallels Desktop 6 (in Coherence Mode) on a current-gen Macbook Pro 15".  It is pretty much the base model, except it has a 750GB drive.  I'm going to install 8GB of RAM when the sticks come in, but right now it has the default (4GB).  The only other "special feature" of this Macbook is that it has the upgraded higher res screen.  It is an Intel Core i7 2.0GHz (Sandy Bridge), with 4GB of DDR3 @ 1333MHz, and an AMD Radeon HD 6490M GPU (1680x1050 resolution display).  I have "2" CPU cores and 1.5GB of RAM dedicated to Parallels in the VM Config (I put 2 in quotes because the i7 has hyperthreading so it sees the CPU as 8-core, I'm not sure if it really dedicates two physical cores or if it might be one physical and one virtual, or if it matters).

I have Windows 7 x64 installed in Boot Camp on the machine, on a 300GB partition.  I also have Paragon Software's NTFS Driver for OSX installed, which provides FAST read/write access to NTFS partitons on OSX (though that isn't relevant in Parallels).  And then this Boot Camp partition is set up in Parallels Desktop 6 as a VM (which it actually did completely automatically for me when I installed it, with no user interaction of any kind at all, which impressed me).

MC runs fantastic.

Really.

Totally, completely usable in basically every way.    I'm using MC right now connected to a my Library Server (the media drive is mounted in Windows as a network drive), over WiFi, and it is working great.  I played a bunch of videos on Red October Standard, including a few big 1080p BluRay rips, and it doesn't miss a beat.  I configured the Audio setup as WASAPI - Event Style, and set the DSP to 24-bit (oops, actually, I had to use 16-bit to get it to work in Parallels), with everything else set using my "usual" settings.

Theater View works perfectly.  Maybe just ever-so-slightly slow every once in a great while, but really, it feels native (and those "hesitations" might even be my imagination or network access and caching, as I am on a Library Server via WiFi).

MC works fine in Parallels' Coherence Mode too, which is how I did that screenshot above.  Though for video playback and Theater View obviously you want to go into Full Screen mode in Parallels (otherwise the dock and top Apple menu bar stay visible, even when MC "thinks" it is fullscreen).

I'm completely floored right now.  I'd hoped it would be better using Parallels 6 on a newer machine, but this is unbelievable.

[glynor]

7.0?

No, actually.  This is still on Parallels Desktop 6.

Work bought the laptop and they won't let us run Lion yet (they rolled it back to Snow Leopard, since it shipped with Lion), so I don't have a strong impetus to pay for the upgrade yet.  But with these results, I think I'm going to be using it a LOT, so I might just splurge here one of these days.

I made a little video.  Waiting for it to finish compressing and uploading to Vimeo...  Check back tomorrow or later tonight.

[HTPC4ME]

tagging work? if so any more lag then tagging done via windows client?

[glynor]

I haven't tested tagging yet, but based on the results I was getting, I can't imagine it would be a problem at all.

Here's the video (I don't think I can use the embed code on the forum):

Video Demo of MC 16 running using Parallels Desktop 6 on Mac OSX 10.6.8

I think I'd say that, at the very least, if you have a current gen Sandy Bridge Core i7 CPU in your Mac (and you bother to spring for both Windows 7 and Parallels) you can call that a MC-capable machine.

I also might test Red October HQ and futzing with the Audio settings a bit.  I did try enabling the Hardware acceleration and that borked video playback all up, but no real shocker there.  I don't know, but I bet a lot of the improvements I'm seeing here from last I tried (which was admittedly a long while ago) is because of Red October.

[glynor]

I bet you anything it would work just as well, if not better, on the middle Mac Mini.  It has a 2.5GHz Core i5, AMD Radeon 6630M, and 4GB of RAM.  That's $799 (and very sleek for a HTPC).

I also want to test out the Apple Remote, since I happen to have one.  Might even work!

[aussie1]

I've used MC16 on Parallels (Last year's Mac Air 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM).  Works great, as do all of my other Windows applications.

[glynor]

I've used MC16 on Parallels (Last year's Mac Air 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM).  Works great, as do all of my other Windows applications.

I used it occasionally on my old Macbook (which was a Core 2 Duo with 4-or-8GB of RAM, I can't remember), but I wouldn't say it "worked great".  Now, I admit, I didn't spend a LOT of time with it, mostly because soon after buying Parallels 6, I smashed my laptop and no longer had the simple opportunity.

But, based on what I remember, on a Core 2 Duo machine MC was acceptable for Standard View music-only playback.  It didn't perform like MC did natively, but it was pretty good in Standard View.  But, I'm a very heavy video user in MC.  I'd say that is really my primary use, in fact.  So, when I tested it after I got Parallels 6 set up, one of the first things I'd do was try to play a HD video over the network, and go into Theater View.

Like I said, it has been a while, but my recollection was that the experience for both of those things was not acceptable at all.  Video worked, but dropped frames regularly and quickly, and seeking was slow and unresponsive.  Theater View was sluggish at best.

That is not what I'm getting with this machine at all, and that is a huge difference for me.  On my old machine, I had it set to boot by default to Windows 7, mainly because of MC.  Now, I think I'm going to boot to OSX and use Parallels.

[HTPC4ME]

Glynor in your opinion... MY GF has the mac mini, and she uses it for graphics design, could she get away with using parallels/jriver and still be able to use her illustrator/photoshop without bogging herself down?

[glynor]

If she has the current-gen Mac Mini, I'd say she is almost certainly good-to-go.  It wasn't exactly when I made that screenshot above, but I was running Photoshop CS 5.5 and MC simultaneously on my laptop last night a bunch.

Launching Photoshop was a bit slower than normal with the VM running (no shocker there), as was switching back and forth between Photoshop and MC.  But everything kept working.  In fact, after I took that screenshot above, I left the video playing, launched Photoshop, tweaked my photo, and then saved it out, all while the video was running in the background and, while I couldn't see the video playing because my Photoshop document was in the way, the audio never skipped a beat.

She'd almost certainly be better off with 8GB+ of RAM.  Luckily, RAM is insanely cheap right now, even the notebook variety the Mac Mini uses.

But... Yes, it should work quite well for her.  Of course, you don't have to guess.  Parallels offers a full-featured free trial you can install, and you don't need to activate Windows (or even enter a product key) for a full 30 days after you install it, so you can try it out yourself on her machine.

Proof?

Check it out.

[glynor]

Note, the new video (also linked just above) includes tests of the following:

1. Drag-dropping an image from MC to the OSX desktop.
2. Drag-drop importing from the Boot Camp (C drive) partition into MC.
3. Drag-dropping an image from MC to Adobe Photoshop CS 5.5.
4. Drag-drop importing a video from the Mac's system drive (HFS+ formatted) into MC, and playing it.
5. Drag-drop importing a video that has a Sidecar metadata file from the Mac's system drive into MC.

[MrC]

... and now in 7.0:

Speed and Performance

    Fastest ever: Start, stop and resume Windows more quickly than ever. Access and work faster with Windows and Mac files.
    Brilliant graphics: Experience Parallels’ maximum speed and performance for 3D and graphic intensive applications with improved full screen support and up to 1GB of video memory
    Richer audio: Enjoy music, movies, videos and games more than ever before with support for 7.1 surround sound and a new 5.1 sound driver

[fitbrit]

Very cool! Is Parallels a third party app? Having MC running on my wife's Macbook would be awesome, since it's lighter than my laptop. So when we go away, I could keep my laptop at work and keep it running there.

[MrC]

Yup, parallels . com.

7.0 Update came out today.  Full version of 7.0 shortly.  You can purchase 6.0 today, 7.0 update free.

Edit: I'll post the update notes if anyone wants them.

[fitbrit]

Yup, parallels . com.

7.0 Update came out today.  Full version of 7.0 shortly.  You can purchase 6.0 today, 7.0 update free.

Edit: I'll post the update notes if anyone wants them.

Thanks. I actually just returned from the website to see this reply. One day when I have time, I'll look into it more thoroughly. Great news indeed.

Glynor: Do you see increased performance by assigning more 'cores' to Parallels?

[glynor]

Glynor: Do you see increased performance by assigning more 'cores' to Parallels?

Yes, definitely.  I haven't assigned more than 2 to the VM on this machine, but it certainly runs better with this set to 2 than it does with it set to 1 (the default).  Even more important, though, is RAM.

4GB total system RAM is probably the minimum you'd want to have on board to run Windows 7 in a VM.  Right now, with 4GB total, I have 1.5GB dedicated to the VM (when it is running, of course, you get it back when you shut down the VM).  Both OSX and Windows 7 like to have at least 2GB, and really you'd be better with closer to 4GB total for each.  When I get my new (and hopefully working this time) RAM sticks for this thing, I'll be bumping that up to 3-3.5GB for Windows (probably 3 and see how it goes).

I haven't tried it yet, but Parallels also has an Adaptive Hypervisor mode.  From their help document:

Select the Enable Adaptive Hypervisor option to automatically allocate the host computer CPU resources between the virtual machine and Mac OS X applications depending on what application you are working with at the moment. If your virtual machine window is in focus, the priority of this virtual machine processes will be set higher than the priority of the Mac processes. As a result, more CPU resources will be allocated to the virtual machine. If you switch to the primary OS window - the priority of its working applications will be set higher and the CPU resources will be relocated to Mac OS X.

Something automatically messing with priorities, especially since I often have heavy-duty background processes running (but might just be listening to some tunes in the foreground), frightens me a bit so I haven't tried it.  Nice isn't always nice.

[glynor]

... and now in 7.0:

Speed and Performance

    Fastest ever: Start, stop and resume Windows more quickly than ever. Access and work faster with Windows and Mac files.
    Brilliant graphics: Experience Parallels’ maximum speed and performance for 3D and graphic intensive applications with improved full screen support and up to 1GB of video memory
    Richer audio: Enjoy music, movies, videos and games more than ever before with support for 7.1 surround sound and a new 5.1 sound driver

I know... I saw that (it made me laugh that just as I was getting it finally set up on my Mac again, ding, I got the email announcing the new release).

I'm particularly interested in the Audio improvements.  As I mentioned above, I had to set the bit depth on MC to 16-bit to get audio working.  It would be nice to avoid that.  Now, even though I have MC set to WASAPI, I'm sure it is still then going through the OSX Mixer after the fact (ie not bit-perfect).  But, at least it isn't going through BOTH the Windows mixer and the OSX one.

The multichannel stuff would be good too.  This laptop has, of course, the Radeon 6490M GPU, which can do HDMI out (via a miniDP dongle I already have in the bag) including bitstreaming.  It would be sweet to still be able to bitstream even from within Parallels.  Who knows?

I'm definitely going to test it and see.  Based on my past experiences with Parallels, though, I'm going to give v7.0 a minor revision or two before I jump onboard.  They tend to push things out a little before they're quite ready, IMHO.

[MrC]

Boot up time w/Win 7 is about 6 seconds.

No hiccups so far.  Theater view is fast, animations are fast.  Feels pretty much like I'm on directly on the iron.

[glynor]

A couple updates:

The Apple Remote (I have the newer aluminum one) works mostly.  I haven't been able to get the Center "Select" button to work as Enter, which stinks.  The arrows work (which gets you 90% there), play/pause works, and Menu takes you back one screen in Theater View.  Just no "Enter" and no Green button.

I could probably reprogram those two commands in Girder if I have to, but it would be nice if there was a way to have it work out-of-the-box since it is SO CLOSE.  Perhaps this is something I can set up in MC's Remote Setup section?  I've never even adventured in there.

Either way, I'd want:

Menu = Green Button
Center/Select = Enter

Not sure why the center button isn't working as-is (it seems like it should) but it doesn't.  Perhaps MC has some support built in, but expects the old white remote?

In other news...

tagging work? if so any more lag then tagging done via windows client?

I just tagged a bunch of files.  Worked exactly like running MC Natively on a Library Server Client.  Fast and no issues.

The only other thing I'm encountering is that if I close MC with the normal Windows-style Red X in the corner, it crashes MC instead of closing it (from Coherence mode).  If I instead quit via Command-Q, using the Menu bar quit command, or right clicking on the Dock icon, then it closes down normally (usually, I have had a one or two crashes this way too).

Switching libraries seems to be a bit flaky too, particularly going from a local to a Library Server.  Once you get the library loaded, though, it is smooth sailing even when you close and re-open MC.

[MrC]

Same here w/the remote.

When in Standard View, I can't nav. my way out of certain tree items.  I get stuck in Video and can't go upwards to Images.  Same w/Documents.  Some tree items expand and auto-collapse when Up (or Up arrow) is pressed.  Not Documents nor Video.

[MrC]

The Apple Remote (I have the newer aluminum one) works mostly.  I haven't been able to get the Center "Select" button to work as Enter, which stinks.  The arrows work (which gets you 90% there), play/pause works, and Menu takes you back one screen in Theater View.  Just no "Enter" and no Green button.

As per this thread, I was able to get all buttons of the new aluminum remote to work.

[Magic_Randy]

Quick question for you glynor...

I'm thinking of getting an iMac with Parallels Desktop so I can still run the handful of critical applications are only available for Windows.

When I'm working with media (pictures, music, movies...) can I access the same files with both Mac and Windows applications? As an example, can I use MC for all of this as I do today and still use Mac software like Final Cut Pro to edit my movies? Or maybe the Mac version of Lightroom but still use MC with the same files?

Or maybe JimH's April fools joke comes true and there will be a Mac version of MC