title: Why are Mac computers so good at h264 video decoding?
body: <p>Right now I'm working on an application that uses JavaFX and it allows you to seek through videos. All of our videos are recorded with the same settings as far as bitrate and GOP structure. With the exact same video, seeking through the video on Mac computers look awesome and the screen updates at a really fast rate.</p>
  
  <p>Basically, all the Mac computers in our office are able to play the h264 encoded videos back in reverse at 30 FPS without any problem. It looks the same as it does going forward. </p>
  
  <p>On Windows machines though, I can't see the video actually update on the UI when playing in reverse at 30 FPS. I have to slow it down to about 10 in order for the screen to update.</p>
  
  <p>Both computers are using hardware acceleration and have similar specs. As a matter of fact, we have a Mac with a 2.4 GHz processor and 4 GB of RAM that performs better than any of our Windows computers with higher specs when seeking through videos.</p>
  
  <p>What things can contribute to this? Do Mac computers have some special hardware that enables this? Is it possible to get this kind of performance out of a Windows machine?</p>