Hi Marc,

If your system is reporting 704MB, it is using SMA video. You likely have 768MB with 64MB pulled out for the SMA share. My laptop runs a 64MB dedicated video card, which is faster archetecture.

Take a look for my post under the "shoulda bought a C6" thread. It explains the limitations of SMA and what you can do to overcome them.

Chris

Media Player Classic, like all DirectShow players, are simply "front ends" for the base of "DirectShow Filters" (DSFs) installed on a Windows system. Except for the internal mpeg4 splitter contained in the latest version of Media Player Classic (MPC) all the video processing heavy lifting is done by system filters so differences in video appearance or playback is the result in the configuration of those DSFs or "filter graphs." Differences in luminance level is usually attributable to the video renderer used and how it deals with PC levels vs. video levels. MPC can be configured to use a variety of renderers, including the new experimental Haali renderer in the latest builds of MPC. Most commercial mainstream or "shrinkwrap" player lack this essential control! Look to MPC, Zoomplayer, BSPlayer, Radlight, or MyTHEATRE to provide various renderer control features.

Here's a calibration howto that explains some of the problem:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=523614

Note that Windows VMR9 retains the full 0-255 range of levels and does not clip blacker than black or whiter than white levels. If you've adjusted your display to display an overlay or VMR7 filter graph correctly, switching to a VMR9 graph will usually result in greater overall brightness and a more washed-out loooking display because only the 16-235 levels are normally present in properly authored video and the 0-15 and 236-255 levels are simply being "unused" in VMR9 playback.

BTW, I've had good luck with MPEG Streamclip for converting both mpeg2 and mpeg4 videos on Windows and Mac platforms. http://www.squared5.com/ It's cheaper than Quicktime Pro. :) (It's free.)

This seems to be a high-level discussion, so let me put this question:
I am doing just fine editing HD1 footage on an Intel Mac Mini and rendering in Quicktime HD 720P. The videos look great on a 60 inch HDTV, but the files work out to 300 MB per minute. Is there any format that they could be converted to without significant loss of quality that would require less storage space?