[Eug Wanker]

Just wondering. Apple recommends a G4 1.25 to play back 24 fps 480p H.264 on its QT site. (Obviously this is encoded very differently from the 480p H.264 they have for iPods.)

They recommend:

For 852x480 (480p) video at 24 frames per second:

QuickTime 7 for Mac OS X:
1.25 GHz PowerMac G4 or faster Macintosh computer
At least 128MB of RAM
64MB or greater video card <-- Not sure why

QuickTime 7 for Windows:
2.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or faster processor
At least 512MB of RAM
64MB or greater video card <-- Not sure why
Windows 2000 or XP

Is your G4 able to play back this 2.45 Mbps 852x362 24 fps H.264 video? (Option-click in Safari to download it.)

It plays at around 16-20 fps (Window --> Show Movie Info, in QuickTime) on my 1.7 GHz Cube.



16-20 fps is not bad, but obviously 24 fps is smoother. I guess the 100 MHz bus really kills it. All the 1.25 GHz G4 desktop Macs have a 167 MHz bus, and the 1.2 GHz iBook has a 133 MHz bus. Dunno if the 1.2 GHz iBook will play it smoothly though.

At least it's not like a G3. G3's are an absolute disaster on H.264.

[SpaceMonkey]

Yes, plays fine for me. PowerBook specs are in my sig.

[Velocity211]

Played on my powerbook

[voodoo]

Plays fine for me at 24 fps. G4 iBook, 1.33 GHz, 1GB RAM, 32 MB graphics card.

V

[Eug Wanker]

For you guys with the 1.67 GHz PowerBooks, IIRC you can almost play back some 720p H.264 movie trailers cleanly.

Originally Posted by voodoo

Plays fine for me at 24 fps. G4 iBook, 1.33 GHz, 1GB RAM, 32 MB graphics card.

Yeah, thx. That's what I figured. The 1.33 GHz iBook only has a 133 MHz bus, but obviously it seems to be good enough. I'll have to test my GF's 1.07 GHz iBook. I wonder why Apple specifies a 64 MB GPU though.

P.S. The reason I think it has to be the bus is because during playback it only uses about 50% of my CPU according to Activity Monitor. Therefore I'm guessing a G4 1.07 iBook might just be fine with it.

[Velocity211]

NASA 720p playing on my powerbook, lets see how 1080p runs.

[waxcrash]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Is your G4 able to play back this 2.45 Mbps 852x362 24 fps H.264 video? (Option-click in Safari to download it.)

It plays at around 16-20 fps (Window --> Show Movie Info, in QuickTime) on my 1.7 GHz Cube.

That's strange that your 1.7GHz struggles, but I get 24 fps on my TiBook 800MHz.

[Velocity211]

Originally Posted by waxcrash

That's strange that your 1.7GHz struggles, but I get 24 fps on my TiBook 800MHz.

That's because the 800 PB has a 133MHz bus, the cube has a 100MHz bus.



1080p played suprisingly well on my Powerbook.

[Kr0nos]

Plays like a charm.

G4 PowerBook // 1 GHz // 768 MB RAM

[mindwaves]

24 fps on my dual 867 MDD

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by waxcrash

That's strange that your 1.7GHz struggles, but I get 24 fps on my TiBook 800MHz.

Yeah, as was said, I'm thinking it's the bus.

I wonder what kind of CPU usage the 800 MHz has. My guess is it's well over 80%. I also suspect a Ti 667 MHz would struggle.

P.S. That PowerBook also has lots of L2 cache. I wonder if that makes any difference.

[cakey]

seems to play fine on mine

[©öñFü$íóÑ]

Just so you all get an idea on the Athlon side... (for the sake of comparison) It plays smoothly for about 1.22 seconds, then it gets choppy (or looks like it froze for about 7 seconds).... then smoothly.... then choppy again....

An 800 MHz Athlon (year 2000 version) just doesn't cut it these days for all the new video compression codecs. (I have a 64mb AGP 8x..... but the mobo is at only AGP 4x)

Anyone have a similar 'Intel' setup (about as old as the G4)?

[slpdLoad]

Perfect 24 fps on my 1Ghz PowerBook, 768 RAM

[Jawbone54]

No problem on my 1.67 Ghz PBook. 1.5 GB of RAM.

[Oneota]

Plays just peachy on my 1.25 GHz PowerBook (1st gen Aluminum PowerBook, 1 GB RAM).

[forkies]

ibook g4, 800mhz, 640 mb ram
plays at a consistent 24fps

[Lateralus]

I think you sorely underestimate the G4, Eug. Just because your Cube performs so badly at a lot of things (slow bus combined with no cache), doesn't mean the rest of us are suffering.

My Dual 1.42GHz/2MB plays 24 FPS constanstly and my processor useage doesn't exceed 40%~ on either processor. Plus I've got 9 torrents running in Transmission.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

I think you sorely underestimate the G4, Eug. Just because your Cube performs so badly at a lot of things (slow bus combined with no cache), doesn't mean the rest of us are suffering.

I don't underestimate the G4's abilities. I'm just a realist.

Anyways, I didn't say it was the G4's problem per se in this thread. I said it was the bus. Like I said, my G4 only uses about 50% CPU for 480p H.264.

As for the cache, I'll point out that the 7447A chips have twice the L2 cache of the 7455 chips. They just have no L3 cache. However, I'm not convinced the L3 cache has much to do with it though, as forkies' iBook G4 800 works fine with zero L3 cache. The difference here is that his iBook has a 133 MHz bus.

Judging by the posts, it seems that 480p H.264 is the territory of these G4s:

Any G4 iBook
A Quicksilver Power Mac or above (or possibly the 733 MHz model Digital Audio).
Any AluBook
The later TiBooks

However, it seems these are problematic:

Any G3 machine
The earlier TiBooks
The Cube
Gigabit Ethernet or earlier Power Macs <-- Anyone test a dual?

[reader50]

18-24fps on my Sawtooth @ 1.2 GHz with Radeon 7000 PCI (32MB)

If memory serves, 480p trailers do 24fps on the Sawtooth @ 1.1 GHz when I use the Radeon 8500 AGP (64MB).

Doesn't look like the 100MHz bus is a bottleneck for 480p. Eug, do you have the stock Rage 128 Pro in your Cube? Or it could be the CPU cache, like others have suggested. My CPU card is a 7455 with 2 MB of L3.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by reader50

18-24fps on my Sawtooth @ 1.2 GHz with Radeon 7000 PCI (32MB)

If memory serves, 480p trailers do 24fps on the Sawtooth @ 1.1 GHz when I use the Radeon 8500 AGP (64MB).

Hmmm... That's odd. Why would the Radeon 8500 vs. Radeon 7000 make much of a difference? Neither do H.264 assist. Is it just the AGP vs. PCI thing?

Doesn't look like the 100MHz bus is a bottleneck for 480p. Eug, do you have the stock Rage 128 Pro in your Cube? Or it could be the CPU cache, like others have suggested. My CPU card is a 7455 with 2 MB of L3.

Yeah, the L3 cache may help, but from your results (at least with the Radeon 7000) it seems it's not quite enough on a 100 MHz bus system, as your Sawtooth stumbles too.

I do have the stock ATI Rage 128 card. I had a stock GeForce 2 MX card in it but when I brought the Cube home recently I noticed that the VGA was dying. At work I had been using it strictly with DVI, so I never noticed. I'm not gonna reinstall the GeForce 2 MX just for this test.

P.S. As you probably know, the ATI Rage 128 Pro works fine with OS X Tiger, but stuff like Exposé animation is choppy. Interestingly, CoverFlow in iTunes 7 is smooth as buttaa. I guess Quartz Extreme is not required for CoverFlow.

P.P.S. FWIW, 480p video for the iPod works perfectly fine on the Cube. I should damn well hope so though.

[reader50]

I officially don't have enough to do this morning.

Put the Radeon 8500 AGP (64MB) back in the Sawtooth and tested.

23.60 - 24.20 fps. The fact that it sometimes jumped a little above 24 suggests that it didn't drop any frames, and caught up each time after it slipped a bit.

1.2 GHz 7455 (Gigadesigns) single CPU. Load was 64-67% for QT7, 6-7% for the windowserver. Total load 70-75%.

[Chuckit]

Great movie, by the way.

[christ]

Dual 533 (Digital Audio?)



Plays flawlessly at 24

[reader50]

Went back to the Radeon 7000, only I enabled the Quartz Extreme hack for PCI this time.

23.60 - 24.40 fps. Framerate varied from 24 much more often than the 8500 did, but it still apparently didn't drop any frames. QT7 load went up an avg of maybe 2%, windowserver load cut about in half. Total load became more like 68-72%.

Note that in all of my tests, the 480p file was played at Normal size, not full screen. The Finder and all other GUI apps were quit, except Terminal which was running top via the following low-cpu command: top -uds 10

Eug, I think you need QE. And it's not compatible with a Rage 128 Pro. You maybe need some L3 cache too.

[cwosigns]

Played fine at 24 fps. I have a 12" PowerBook with 768 MB RAM and 1.5 GHz powering an Apple 20" Cinema Display.

[IFLY2HIGH]

My little ol, single 800 mhz Gigabit G4, plays a constant 23.98 fps and never misses a beat, so I'd assume my dual 1 ghz Gigabit G4 would have no problems either...

[rickey939]

Wow, I'm happy to report my faithful TiBook 667 MHz (DVI) with 1GB of RAM is still worthy. I got right at 24 fps consistently throughout the entire movie.

w00t!

[D. S. Troyer]

Mine played fine. When I pressed the double arrows it sputtered for a while till it got its' legs back.

[OwlBoy]

/cry my 500mhz G3 iMac won't play it!

-Owl

[turtle777]

No probs on a Mac mini G4 1.42 GHz.

-t

[Kenneth]

24 fps on my dual G4 1.25

Seagate 160GB HDD (8mb cache)
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (Mac+PC edition) 256MB RAM.
Latest version of QT.

[bstone]

Wrong forum.

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by bstone

Wrong forum.

Vacation time.

[Chuckit]

Lateralus is becoming quite the travel agent these days.

[Stogieman]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

I wonder what kind of CPU usage the 800 MHz has. My guess is it's well over 80%. I also suspect a Ti 667 MHz would struggle.

The CPU usage on my TiBook 800mhz fluctuated between 55-65% during playback.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Lateralus is becoming quite the travel agent these days.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by reader50

Went back to the Radeon 7000, only I enabled the Quartz Extreme hack for PCI this time.

23.60 - 24.40 fps. Framerate varied from 24 much more often than the 8500 did, but it still apparently didn't drop any frames. QT7 load went up an avg of maybe 2%, windowserver load cut about in half. Total load became more like 68-72%.

Note that in all of my tests, the 480p file was played at Normal size, not full screen. The Finder and all other GUI apps were quit, except Terminal which was running top via the following low-cpu command: top -uds 10

Eug, I think you need QE. And it's not compatible with a Rage 128 Pro. You maybe need some L3 cache too.

Well, whaddya know. Confirmed!

It's the GPU. I stuck that GeForce 2 MX in and everything's smooth as buttaa. So, the CPU's L3 cache has nothing to do with it.

As reader50 says it must be QE, since the GPU provides no H.264 decode assist.

[Gossamer]

My iBook G4/1.33/768 played it no problems as did my P4/2.66/1GB/GMA900

The P4 played The Protector trailer in 720p just fine but choked on 1080p.

[SSharon]

played fine on my MDD in sig.

edit: I duplicated the file and played both at the same time with no dropped frames.

[MacGallant]

Plays fine for me too.
It almost played consistently at 24 fps.
It dipped for 1 second to 23.50 fps and it went as high as 24.60 fps.
Smooth playback with no slowdowns.
Like the phrase from Steve Jobs, "Smooth like butta."

[Gamoe]

Plays perfectly on my 1Ghz. eMac, in window mode as well as full screen. It played at 24 FPS most of the time, and never dipped below 23 FPS.

[Eug Wanker]

I wonder how much system bandwidth Quartz Extreme saves.

[icruise]

The first time I tried it, it played like total crap on my 1.33Ghz 12" PowerBook (1.25GB RAM). It stuttered and got maybe 13fps. I stopped it after 30 seconds or so and started over, and then it played perfectly. I did have a lot of programs open though.

[ink]

Originally Posted by OwlBoy

/cry my 500mhz G3 iMac won't play it!

-Owl

I wonder if MPlayer would work?

I've found that it handily trounces Quicktime in just about every regard.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by ink

I wonder if MPlayer would work?

I've found that it handily trounces Quicktime in just about every regard.

Haven't tried it, but I doubt it.

Altivec/SSE is likely extremely important for this, hence the requirements.

IIRC, even a 900 MHz G3 chokes badly. Painful.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by bstone

Wrong forum.

Originally Posted by Lateralus

Vacation time.

I hope he wasn't banned for that comment ?

That would be messed up, because he is right.

-t

[SirCastor]

playback for me was flawless as near as I can tell. My G4 is now as suped up as I intend to make it. Time to start saving for a (couple of) new machine(s).

(I have a dream of a Mac Pro for home/heavy work and a MacBook for notes and on-the-go stuff)

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck

I hope he wasn't banned for that comment ?

That would be messed up, because he is right.

-t

Actually, that isn't why I banned him. And no, he wasn't right. This thread is where it is supposed to be since it is not machine specific.

He had posted 'Wrong forum.' in about 7 threads over the course of a day or two. Had he bothered to post something a little meatier rather than just the same copy-pasted one liner over and over, I might have overlooked it. But he didn't. So what he did amounts to post count hiking.

Not to mention the fact that I warned him about forum policing in another thread where he posted the same thing before posting it here.

Don't worry, his flight home should be arriving in a few days

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

This thread is where it is supposed to be since it is not machine specific.

Why not in the Applications forum ? It is NOT machine specific, but software related.
It's a no-brainer to me.

-t