System Preferences

Displays

Right-click on image of display

Select "Stop Mirroring"

PlaybackPro Plus only works in Extended desktop mode.

The option to "Stop Mirroring" will only be available if the displays are actively mirroring.

System Preferences

Mission Control

Uncheck “Displays have separate Spaces”

If this setting is checked, some Mac and switcher combinations will produce black on all displays.

System Preferences

Desktop and Screen Saver

Uncheck "Show screen saver after..."

System Preferences

Energy Saver or

Battery

and/or

Set “Turn display off after:” to “Never”

Uncheck “Put hard disks to sleep when possible”

Uncheck “Enable Power Nap...”

Uncheck “Low Power Mode”

System Preferences

Energy Saver or

Battery

and/or

Uncheck “Automatic Graphics switching”

This setting only appears if your system has two graphics chipsets.

System Preferences

Sound

Uncheck “Play user interface sound effects”

Uncheck “Play feedback when audio is changed”

These settings mute all MacOS sounds.

System Preferences

Sound

Select the output device you would like to use for all playback audio

System Preferences

Network

Turn off all Internet connections

Background Internet connections may create additional processing and deplete system performance.

System Preferences

Bluetooth

Turn off all Bluetooth connections

Wireless connections for devices like mice or keyboards can be unreliable in show environments.

System Preferences

Software Update

Uncheck “Automatically keep my Mac up to date”

System Preferences

Software Update

Uncheck “Check for updates”

Unanticipated software updates can significatly impact system performance.

System Preferences

Time Machine

Uncheck “Back up Automatically”

Continual backups can cause computer performance degradation and affect playback.

System Preferences

Spotlight

Turn off MacOS Spotlight indexing for external drives

Indexing helps macOS locate files faster on a drive but it takes time and can slow down a system.

System Preferences

Security and Privacy

Turn off FileVault

FileVault is data encryption and is off by default. Encryption requires significant processing overhead and can impact playback performance. If your system has FileVault enabled, you need to check with the system admin before changing this setting.

System Preferences

Users and Groups

Minimize the number of apps loaded at startup

Minimize the number of apps loaded at startup. Fewer background apps results in more system resources for playback.

System Preferences

General

Under “Show scroll bars”, select Always

Modern macOS versions hide scroll bars based on mouse or trackpad activity. It is helpful to always have them on when using PlaybackPro Plus.

System Preferences

Apple ID

Uncheck "Apps on this Mac using iCloud:"

This step is not necessary if you have disabled Internet connections as outlined in section 7. If your computer remains connected to the internet, we recommend unchecking apps which sync with iCloud to avoid unexpected performance degradation. Please note that unchecking iCloud apps may, depending on your answer to the dialog box, remove local copies of files from your computer, proceed with caution.

Optimal File Types

If a file does not play well in PlaybackPro or PlaybackPro Plus a quick solution can be to re-encode and rewrap the file in a .mov container using QuickTime Player.

Other transcoding software like Apple Compressor or Adobe Media Encoder can be very helpful to process playback content.

Our recommended codecs are Apple ProRes 422 (Standard), h.264 or h.265 in a .mov (preferred) or .mp4 container.