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Mac Mini running Full HD for two months


Stuart91

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One of my clients is looking to exhibit a short film that they have put together. It'll be running in a museum, with only minimal input from non-technical staff. (i.e. I'm expecting them to be able to turn the projector on and off each day, but that's about it)

 

The film is full HD, and about 40 mins long. I did a brief test run this morning and it played back fine on a relatively modest Core Due Macbook. The client can potentially beg/borrow a Mac Mini which seems like the ideal solution - it's compact and straightforward and we should be able to go from DVI to one of the HDMI inputs on the projector.

 

The only thing I'm a little unsure about is how well it will hold up long term. The movie will be shown from 10am to 5pm seven days a week for roughly two months - the length of the run is still under negotiation but it will definitely be more than six weeks. I can easily enough schedule the machine to shut down at night, and start the movie automatically. I'm a bit worried about the cumulative effect of playing it on repeat all day, if the machine will slowly grind to a halt, or gradually lose lip sync etc.

 

I won't have much chance to check things out with the actual machine, since it'll arrive a day or two before the showings kick off. I don't have any detailed specs apart from that it's "fairly new". I was wondering if anyone else has had experience of using a Mac Mini for this, or encountered any problems in the past?

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I've had a Mini playing out 4 or 5 short films from Q Lab on repeat for several weeks with any problems (except possibly for the sanity of the receptionist sitting near it). Turning on & off was done by the scheduler in OS with Q Lab loading automatically at start-up .

 

I think somebody had to hit a play button first thing each day, but can't quite remember now if we set it up that way for technical reasons, of if that's what they wanted.

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The Blu Ray route looks sensible, part of me is a bit concerned about leaving optical media running for that length of time but I'm sure that's just paranoia stemming from all the scratched audio CDs that have been handed to me over the years. ;)

 

The Mac Mini is essentially a free loan that the client can source themselves, so cost isn't really an issue, but the simplicity of a Blu Ray player has a certain attraction. However, would a player be able to default to repeat play as soon as it is turned on? The venue will no doubt want to be able to power it down overnight (lest it spontaneously combust…). At a similar installation last summer I had no end of hassle when museum staff were incapable of pressing power on, play, and repeat in order each morning.

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don't expect a mechanical disc to play for months, its a mechanical device after all and unless its a very expensive industrial unit, its not to be trusted. You also need to consider what happened when the power glitches so need something that restarts without intervention. The tried and tested way would be to use a dedicated hardware player like a Brightsign - we own dozens and regularly instal them expecting the to run unattended for months. Just this week installed one in an exhibition that's up for 9 months round hrh's northern gaff.

 

The mac minis should work fine and are generally reliable, but its over complicated and whatever you do dont let it connect to the internet otherwise it will update itself and break. you need to use some applescript to play the file fullscreen on boot and loop an infinitum but that's simple enough. id not bother with qlab as im assuming qt will do it for you. You can also to play your file then play a short black only file as this will clear the buffers and should sort out any sync issue, but that will only be caused by the film being encoded in a high but variable datarate, if you make a transport stream and keep it under 20Mbs you should be absolutely fine either on a mac mini or a brightsign. Its possibly also worth fitting a ssd drive to the mac mini as this takes the moving hdd out of the equation and in my experience moving parts are where it goes wrong.

 

So in essence yes , and when we do this stuff we author it and then power it up and leave it running for a day or two, if it runs smoothly after a short period, barring hardware failures its going to be absolutely fine.

 

 

 

 

 

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You should be fine doing this with a mac mini, especially if you restart it at regular intervals.

 

However, if anything fails it is most likely to be the hard drive, not much you can do about that, except having a backup device or perhaps changing to an SSD which while not 100% are probably more reliable.

 

Consider carefully whether you connect your pc to the internet, updates will probably break something resulting in a service call, however the ability to remotely connect to the mac may mean you can sort out some issues without visiting site. There are benefits to both approaches.

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Thanks for all the additional replies.

 

As AHYoung says, I wouldn't expect a domestic Blu-Ray player to last the run. Replacing the HD in the mac with an SSD might be an option, especially since we wouldn't need much capacity. I could put it in an external case to avoid having to crack open the borrowed Mac Mini.

 

The preview clip I was checking out today is apparently running at 5000k/sec, so well below the 20Mb/sec mentioned. I'll push to have the machine for a few days beforehand so I can run it and see if it falls over.

 

The venue isn't far away - roughly 20 mins drive from our premises - so the occasional call-out isn't the end of the world, but I'm keen to avoid them if we can. Remote control / monitoring of the machine would be wonderful, but I'm not sure if there is any internet connection in that part of the building. (And it's big solid stone walls so wi fi is out - I couldn't even get a phone signal) It is simple enough to stop a Mac installing upgrades automatically, so I wouldn't be worrying about introducing problems that way.

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what I have done (a few years ago) was to copy the short film several times to my video software(FCP) and make a longer film that represents several films.

 

then make a disc that auto- repeats as it's easier on the disc and the player if the disc plays for 90 mins and repeats, rather than very 20 mins.

 

If the disc is authored to auto-repeat, then a power cut will allow a novice to switch it all back on, whereas some cheap DVD players have non screen graphics or can lose the command.

 

it may be a bit old skool but worked and allowed a second player and disc to be on standby for peanuts.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I`m not sure if this is permitted but I`m sure Mods will remove if I`m breaking any rules etc..

 

But ...

 

I have installed similar systems in the past using desktop machines running Windows and VLC Media player.

 

Infact I am currently selling a number of Desktop Machines that were custom Built for Digital Screen Media usage... See www.Kaleidovision.co.uk

 

These systems are designed to be left running for Years.... They cost £2000+ but I`m selling for £120 each.... PM if your interested.

 

Or

 

if you have an old Desktop PC , install VLC and off you go...

 

 

Matt

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  • 6 months later...

A quick update: I was back in the venue today removing the equipment at the end of the run. In the end, the client wasn't able to get a loan of a Mac Mini so we provided a basic Macbook, and ran the footage on loop via VLC. The venue staff took a little bit of time to get used to the complexities of starting up the computer, opening the file, and hitting play, but we only had one call out a few days into the run.

 

Whilst I'd considered adding an SSD, we didn't get around to doing anything about it and the HD seems to have performed fine - certainly there has been no reports of crashes or any untoward behaviour. It may have been that the movie itself was small enough to be mainly buffered in RAM rather than requiring continuous HD access.

 

It looks like the kit was in use for 365hrs over a 9 week run. I guess that's a fairly lightweight shift compared to some machines that will be running 24/7 indefinitely, but it's still quite encouraging to have had it all run so straightforwardly on relatively basic kit.

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