Some thoughts about the 2009 setup.

[Polysynchronicity]

I went to quite a few showings this year, and it was great. But there's a couple things I noticed that I'd like to point out. Maybe the viewing rooms can be even better next year.  :-\

1. Interrupted Shows
Pretty much everything I went to see got interrupted because of scheduling. It seems like shows had been scheduled quite often in slots that were shorter than their total running time. (For example, Glassy Ocean was interrupted about 2/3 of the way through so that K-ON could be put on.) It's really sad when something you're enjoying gets stopped unexpectedly! Could you try to budget enough time for the full scheduled number of episodes (plus a few minutes in case of technical difficulties), so people actually get to see what the schedule says will be playing?

2. Playback Problems
I only saw this happen with Macross Frontier, but it really ruined my enjoyment of the show. Basically, the Mac Minis you were using work great on DVD-quality shows, but the Macross Frontier episodes were in HD, and the Mac Mini just wasn't powerful enough to play them without stuttering and locking up. You have to be careful and try to make sure that the computers you set up for playback can handle the video files you have, or this is going to happen again. :S

You could get more powerful computers, but it's also not too hard to re-encode episodes down to a lower resolution if they're not already available outside HD. I'd even volunteer to help out with that if you wanted. ;)

[lyricaldanichan]

The CPUs are intel, It needs more ram, can't do much with the HD episodes on 1GB of ram.

You could get more powerful computers, but it's also not too hard to re-encode episodes down to a lower resolution if they're not already available outside HD. I'd even volunteer to help out with that if you wanted. ;)

[Polysynchronicity]

The CPUs are intel, It needs more ram, can't do much with the HD episodes on 1GB of ram.

I've played HD episodes on my Macbook with 1GB RAM before without running into this, so I'm fairly sure it is the processor. Decoding MKV in high resolution takes up quite a bit of CPU. :S

You could get more powerful computers, but it's also not too hard to re-encode episodes down to a lower resolution if they're not already available outside HD. I'd even volunteer to help out with that if you wanted. ;)

I'd have no problem doing this. ;) I don't live in the San Jose area, though, so I suspect it would be best if someone more local could help. Honestly though you probably don't need to - I think most groups release in HD (h264+MKV) and SD (avi) these days.

[lyricaldanichan]

The CPUs are intel, It needs more ram, can't do much with the HD episodes on 1GB of ram.

I've played HD episodes on my Macbook with 1GB RAM before without running into this, so I'm fairly sure it is the processor. Decoding MKV in high resolution takes up quite a bit of CPU. :S

Right, but do you play them constantly for 4 days? Try that and get back to me ;-).

[Polysynchronicity]

The CPUs are intel, It needs more ram, can't do much with the HD episodes on 1GB of ram.

I've played HD episodes on my Macbook with 1GB RAM before without running into this, so I'm fairly sure it is the processor. Decoding MKV in high resolution takes up quite a bit of CPU. :S

Right, but do you play them constantly for 4 days? Try that and get back to me ;-).

Honestly, if the length of time it's running makes a difference, I'd suspect a memory leak. I have seen mplayer do that - memory usage gradually goes up and it starts skipping after several episodes in a row. But restarting mplayer usually fixes it, and it's usually small sound sync problems rather than the massive image breakups that I saw this year. How often do those Minis get rebooted?

[lyricaldanichan]

The ironic part is we are using Quicktime not mplayer.

Unless one of the staffers went renegade and decided to use mplayer.

The CPUs are intel, It needs more ram, can't do much with the HD episodes on 1GB of ram.

I've played HD episodes on my Macbook with 1GB RAM before without running into this, so I'm fairly sure it is the processor. Decoding MKV in high resolution takes up quite a bit of CPU. :S

Right, but do you play them constantly for 4 days? Try that and get back to me ;-).

Honestly, if the length of time it's running makes a difference, I'd suspect a memory leak. I have seen mplayer do that - memory usage gradually goes up and it starts skipping after several episodes in a row. But restarting mplayer usually fixes it, and it's usually small sound sync problems rather than the massive image breakups that I saw this year. How often do those Minis get rebooted?

[Polysynchronicity]

The ironic part is we are using Quicktime not mplayer.

Using Perian to decode .mkv, I assume? I'll run some tests.

Unless one of the staffers went renegade and decided to use mplayer.

Could have sworn I saw the mplayer interface during one of the changeovers, but I'm sure I could be mistaken. They do look at least somewhat similar under OS X.