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Saturday, July 14, 2012, 12:19 pm
Inside OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion GM: AirPlay Mirroring
AirPlay, Apple's wireless audio and video distribution system, gets an update in OS X Mountain Lion, offering modern Macs with compatible hardware the ability to wirelessly mirror the screen to an Apple TV-attached HDTV display.AirPlay, originally named AirTunes when Apple debuted it in 2004 as a way to wirelessly stream audio from iTunes to speakers connected to the AirPort Express base station, had its name changed by Steve Jobs in 2010 after the technology was expanded to include video and photo streaming to the then-new, $99 iOS-based Apple TV.
While iTunes currently has the ability to stream both audio and video playback to Apple TV, OS X can't deliver audio or video from other apps. Additionally, because AirPlay involves encryption of streamed data, it's not easy for third party developers to send data to AirPlay devices.
New AirPlay Mirroring
All that is changing in Mountain Lion. The most obvious benefit is that hardware-compliant Macs can now do the same AirPlay Mirroring trick as last year's new iOS devices (iPhone 4S and iPad 2 or newer): anything on the screen can be mirrored to an Apple TV-connected display.
As with iOS devices, Macs need special hardware to support AirPlay Mirroring. It doesn't work on the Mid 2010 MacBook Pro, for example, but does work on early 2011 MacBook Pros, as well as mid 2011 or newer MacBook Air, iMac or Mac mini systems.
These systems are the oldest machines capable of supporting AirPlay Mirroring because they are the first to deliver dedicated hardware encoding for H.264. Without a CPU capable of crunching this task using specialized hardware, earlier Macs simply can't transmit video fast enough without a lot of heat and screaming fans.
Older Macs can already send video from iTunes to Apple TV via AirPlay, but they stop local playback while doing this. Mirroring requires the system to produce two video images, one driving the local display and one to be wirelessly delivered to the external screen.
AirPlay doesn't just relay video from the computer (or iOS device) to Apple TV. It scales down the video to fit on an HDTV resolution, and has to convert the colorspace from the computer's RGB to the native YUV that televisions use. Both tasks require a lot of processing resources, so without the extra hardware available on newer Macs, mirroring isn't possible.
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Previous Comments View All
That's right, if your Mac isn't new, you don't get airplay. :-(
Odd, maybe they are talking about the 13 inches? When I am on a network with an apple TV on it (I only have access to a first gen one) It shows up in my menu bar, are you sure you have that right? I think the mid 2010 dual core quad thread CPU could power it for sure. (On the 15 inch)
I am running a dev preview of ML, so I think it should work when the MIRRORING OPTION COMES UP IN THE MENU BAR. Put some research into is AI!
Without screaming fans? Well, that sure is nice. Forcing my fans to run at 6000 RPM because the operating system thinks going over 100 C is a good idea and doesn't think of turning on the fans. (Over 2500 RPM)
It's a shame not all Macs able to run Mountain Lion have this feature.
Love this. "earlier Macs simply can't transmit video fast enough [edit ... do much of anything] without a lot of heat and screaming fans' ... you've met my MBP then?/laugh
This is why I think I will be updating my mid 2010 MBP i7 after all ... darn it!
Has anyone tried using VLC to play a 1080p non QuickTime movie over airplay to an Apple TV?
I think a requirement is a discrete GPU, because the Macbook Air CPUs are weaker than the 2010 15 inches, so it isn't adding up if it is CPU dependant. Then again, Macbook Airs don't have GPUs either. The limits to this seems to be thunderbolt enabled, which has nothing to do with the wireless transfer rates.
I purchased my quad-core (i5 ?) imac in early 2010 for it's amazing design, huge 27" screen and speed. A MacPro was out of the question at 3X the price. I have been terrible happy using Reduxencoder/VideoMonkey and a hardware dongle from Elgato H.264 to encode video. I was always under the impression my ATI discrete chipset was able to both encode and decode H.263/H.264 video by itself (http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/hd-4850/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-4850-specifications.aspx).
From that page:
ATI Avivo(TM) HD Video and Display Platform6
Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) for H.264/AVC, VC-1, and MPEG-2 video formats High definition (HD) playback of Blu-ray and HD DVD video Dual stream (HD+SD) playback support DirectX Video Acceleration 1.0 & 2.0 support Support for BD-Live certified applications Hardware DivX and MPEG-1 video decode acceleration Accelerated video transcoding & encoding for H.264 and MPEG-2 formats ATI Avivo Video Post Processor6Color space conversion Chroma subsampling format conversion Horizontal and vertical scaling Gamma correction Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing De-blocking and noise reduction filtering Detail enhancement Color vibrance and flesh tone correction Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction) Bad edit correction Enhanced DVD upscaling (SD to HD) Automatic dynamic contrast adjustmentBut I have noticed with Lion the fans pick up spayed and make a racket about 30 minutes into a conversion or playback of HD content. I have had to utilize a far control utility to increase the fans speeds on the MB to keep things cool and safe. Is it possible that Apple/ATI/AMD/Nvidia have never written drivers for the video chipset encoding feature and the CPU is doing the heavy lifting still? I am starting to believe the mac platform may not be the best anymore to video creation.
You can do this with an older Mac via iTunes. It's not that big of a deal. The only limitation is that the display isn't mirrored on both displays, but only the target display.
But I have noticed with Lion the fans pick up spayed and make a racket about 30 minutes into a conversion or playback of HD content. I have had to utilize a far control utility to increase the fans speeds on the MB to keep things cool and safe. Is it possible that Apple/ATI/AMD/Nvidia have never written drivers for the video chipset encoding feature and the CPU is doing the heavy lifting still? I am starting to believe the mac platform may not be the best anymore to video creation.
Yea, my Macbook Pro has hit 100 C without the fans going to max, so i've got programs to run them at 6000 RPM all the time to keep it cool, but when I encode videos (Using a video conversion or iMovie) it doesn't use the graphics, all the load is placed on the CPU when it really shouldn't, for example running your screen on the integrated graphics if you aren't doing much on it and dedicating the discrete card to encoding and whatnot.
All the GPU does is playback and for the displays.
Why do people call this "mirroring" when it doesn't reverse right and left like a mirror? Makes no sense to me.
Apple is usually better with its terminology ("logic board" instead of "mommy board," and "restart" instead of "put on new boots.") In fact, I had to switch to the Mac because Windows made me put new boots on the computer so often that I got in trouble for impersonating a shoe salesman.
Maybe geeks never look in mirrors and don't know from personal experience how they work. Come to think of it, from the way some geeks look, that might be true.
It's good to read your article Daniel! Hope to read some new stuff soon on the Roughly Drafted site! (Sorry for being off topic).
That's right, if your Mac isn't new, you don't get airplay. :-(
What? It won't work on an Apple ][? Scandalous!
Is this accurate? It's not mentioned on Apple's website and other sources suggest that the feature does work on older Macs. Early betas certainly didn't support it on older Macs but I believe it was included in later builds. Has this changed again for the GM?
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It's a shame not all Macs able to run Mountain Lion have this feature.
Love this. "earlier Macs simply can't transmit video fast enough [edit ... do much of anything] without a lot of heat and screaming fans' ... you've met my MBP then?/laugh
This is why I think I will be updating my mid 2010 MBP i7 after all ... darn it!
Has anyone tried using VLC to play a 1080p non QuickTime movie over airplay to an Apple TV?