[x..lauren..x]

I recently purchased a G3 300mhz iBook just to watch some Simpsons episodes on while I'm away from my home. I finally received the computer and was stunned to find out that my Divx/Xvid files won't even play! The sound works fine but the video's incredibly jerky. The computer's got 512mb of ram and it's running OS X. I tried VLC, got an error message saying "computer too slow" Interestingly enough, the computer plays .mov files juuuust fine but it chokes to death when an avi is played.

Someone please tell me this is fixable. I've been a pc user for 15+ years and if a 300mhz mac can't play a simple video clip...wow. Just...wow.

[Eug Wanker]

A 300 MHz G3 is simply not good enough.
A 300 MHz PII isn't good enough either.

[jamil5454]

Divx/Xvid files are pretty compressed and take a decent amount of CPU power to decode. Try converting them to uncompressed.

[pat++]

Try to install the 3ivx codec for Quicktime. It's the fastest thing available to play divx files for G3 chips.

http://www.3ivx.com/

btw, I had problems to play some videos on my old 500mhz iBook... so I guess 300mhz is really really going to be slow... just try and see if you see any improvement with the 3ivx codec.

[Tomchu]

A 300 MHz PII is perfectly capable of playing the kind of video that a G3/400 PowerBook wouldn't.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

A 300 MHz PII is perfectly capable of playing the kind of video that a G3/400 PowerBook wouldn't.

Like what? A 300 MHz PII has enough trouble just playing DVD.

[Tomchu]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Like what? A 300 MHz PII has enough trouble just playing DVD.

Like XviD encodes of HDTV rips in 624x352. The PowerBook couldn't handle it worth sh*t, whereas I distinctly remember being able to play such video on an old PII 300/333 that was hanging around here once.

As for DVD ... give me a break. Ever heard of hardware-accelerated DVD decoding? That's the only reason any G3 300-400 MHz Mac can even hope to begin decoding video.

[x..lauren..x]

My old 266MMX would run the types of video files I'm wanting to play with this iBook!

Unless there's a free app which lets me convert my current fies to useable ones for the iBook I must say that I'm definitely not impressed. What a waste of time and money.

[Will C]

Did your old 266MMX have a fancy graphics card?

[Tomchu]

G3s were pretty poor. To play video well in something like VLC it's pretty much guaranteed that you need a G4.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Chud

Unless there's a free app which lets me convert my current fies to useable ones for the iBook I must say that I'm definitely not impressed. What a waste of time and money.

WTF ?

You just bought a 6+ year old computer, and are unimpressed about its performance ? Get outta here

-t

[Tomchu]

Well, considering the hype that there was surround the G3s and G4s from Apple, you'd think the G3 would be able to play his videos -- video that a 300 MHz PII can probably play.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

a video that a 300 MHz PII can probably play.

Only with an advanced graphics card. No way the PII by itself is fast enough to decode it.
I bet that a regular PII laptop at 300 MHz will NOT play it. Guaranteed.

-t

[Tomchu]

Since I'm 95% sure that I've played such videos on a Rage 128 + PII 333, I'm tempted to put it together again just to prove the point. :-/

[SpaceMonkey]

I'm pretty sure I used to play DivX files on my old 333 MHz G3 iMac (w/ 6 MB Rage Pro), but it was probably an older, less compressed version of the codec.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

but it was probably an older, less compressed version of the codec.

Agree. That's quite possible. But today's codecs are definitely too demanding. For a G3 as well as a PII.

-t

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Since I'm 95% sure that I've played such videos on a Rage 128 + PII 333, I'm tempted to put it together again just to prove the point. :-/

Well, but to be fair, the iBook G3 333 MHz didn't have an ATI Rage 128 built in, right ?
My iBook G3 500 MHZ (Dual USB) had a ATI Rage Mobility 128. But that's a newer model than the 333 MHz.

-t

[macintologist]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck

Well, but to be fair, the iBook G3 333 MHz didn't have an ATI Rage 128 built in, right ?
My iBook G3 500 MHZ (Dual USB) had a ATI Rage Mobility 128. But that's a newer model than the 333 MHz.

-t

The original iBook 300Mhz had an ATI Rage Mobility with 4MB of VRAM

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Chud

My old 266MMX would run the types of video files I'm wanting to play with this iBook!

So, Chud, any update on your Apples to Oranges comparison ?

That 266, that "would" run those videos, what kind of computer is it ?
What graphics card ? How much RAM ? What version of DivX are those videos encoded ?

-t

[tooki]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

As for DVD ... give me a break. Ever heard of hardware-accelerated DVD decoding? That's the only reason any G3 300-400 MHz Mac can even hope to begin decoding video.

Oh please.

Both the Pismo (400/500MHz) and the slot-loading iMacs (350MHz and up) use pure software decoding in both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.

All Macs use software decoding in Mac OS X, including earlier Macs like Blue and White G3s. Software DVD decoding in Mac OS X works peachy on a 300MHz G3.


Basically, some codecs need more CPU to decode than others. Generally speaking, the higher the compression ratio, the more CPU it needs to decode. MPEG-2 (what DVDs use) is nowhere near as CPU intensive as DIVX and other MPEG-4 based codecs. H.264 is even more CPU intensive than that.

One can't generalize about QuickTime movies (.mov files), because that is simply a container format that can contain video in any codec, including all the ones I just mentioned above. The CPU requirements are solely dependent on the codec used, not the file format.

Note that in general, VLC is less CPU intensive than QuickTime 7.

Anyway, a 300MHz iBook is underpowered for any codec beyond MPEG-2, basically. Sorry.

tooki

[tooki]

P.S. In both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, the software decoders do use the graphics card's YUV video scaler. But the GPU isn't doing DVD decoding. In the old Macs with hardware DVD decoding, a separate DVD decoder chip did everything and just sent finished video to the GPU for display.

tooki

[icruise]

When I clicked on this thread, I thought it would be about iTMS videos not playing correctly. Both my wife's iBook (original 500mhz dual usb ibook) and my sister's ibook (800mhz) have trouble playing h.264-encoded videos. It's basically a slideshow. Is that just the way it is? Does playing these videos require a G4 or better?

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Icruise

When I clicked on this thread, I thought it would be about iTMS videos not playing correctly. Both my wife's iBook (original 500mhz dual usb ibook) and my sister's ibook (800mhz) have trouble playing h.264-encoded videos. It's basically a slideshow. Is that just the way it is? Does playing these videos require a G4 or better?

Yes. Altivec is key for AVC/H.264 on PowerPC Macs.

Check out my post here.

A G3 900 is completely useless. A G4 800 is just fine however for standard definition H.264.

[icruise]

It doesn't really affect me personally, but I think Apple should make it a little clearer that G3s are incapable of playing these videos. We're not talking about HD trailers or anything -- just 320 x 240 resolution video clips.

[Eug Wanker]

For viewing videos purchased from the iTunes Music Store:

(Macintosh)
500 MHz Power PC G4 or faster Macintosh computer
At least 256MB of RAM and at least 16MB of video memory
QuickTime 7.0.3
Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later

(Windows)
1.5 GHz Intel Pentium class or better processor
At least 256MB of RAM and at least 32MB of video memory
QuickTime 7.0.3
Windows 2000 or XP

[icruise]

And where is this listed? I see no mention of it on the iTunes music store itself, on "videos" section of Apple's "iPod + iTunes" page, or under the video section of the iTMS support page. I'm sure they do mention it somewhere but they could certainly make it more obvious.

[icruise]

Ah, here it is, on the Quicktime Player FAQ page. I doubt if the average person would look there, considering that they are playing the videos in iTunes and probably don't even realize that Quicktime comes into the picture.