[cgc]

I'm trying to rip a couploe of my wife's exercise DVDs to put on my old Sawtooth G4 Mac. They'll playback in iTheater which uses QuickTime as it's decoding engine. I ripped two DVDs via HandBrake using the "QuickTime" preset and it played back but it skipped terribly (CPU utilization = 100%). The G4 has been upgraded to 1GHz and 1GB RAM.

Before I rip different formats and test them (I went through this with my Samsung DLNA TV and want to avoid this), does anyone have any idea which QuickTime compatible video format uses the least CPU. Another way to ask this is which video format will play best on my old G4?

Thanks.

[TETENAL]

I think both either the regular MPEG-4 video codec (not h.264) or Sorenson Video 3 (wich you get in the QuickTime export options if you turn on System Preferences->QuickTime->Advanced->Show legacy encoders) should work well on a G4.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Have you tried ripping them in their native dvd format? Will quicktime play them that way?

[cgc]

That's how I use them currently...as one gigantic VOB file. Works ok, but they take up about 4GB each. I'll try TETENAL's suggestion of MPEG4 (can't use Sorenson Video 3 because QT can't open vob or DVD). Thanks.

[larkost]

There is usually a three way balance between CPU usage, size, and quality. So if you are trying to reduce CPU usage then you are probably going to have to sacrifice some video quality and/or size.

[mduell]

Just rip the disks without reencoding; disk is cheap.

[cgc]

Originally Posted by larkost 

There is usually a three way balance between CPU usage, size, and quality. So if you are trying to reduce CPU usage then you are probably going to have to sacrifice some video quality and/or size.

Yup. My biggest concern is CPU utilization followed by disk usage. I don't want to buy an IDE HDD for my nearly obsolete G4...I'd prefer to try to reuse it as a soso NTSC-quality media server for my also obsolete 27" CRT. My wife uses it in the garage to exercise with (watches exercise videos) so quality isn't paramout.

I ripped a 1.5 minute section from a DVD and played encoded it in HandBrake a few different ways. An MP4 at 70% quality is good...uses 70-85% CPU and doesn't stutter. 80% quality is where the stuttering begins... I could probably use the encode speed (fps) as a way to see how fast it would play back...that MP4 encoded at almost 300fps...never seen that kind of speed recently.

[howardholton]

Try VCD. It is an MPEG1 CODEC. You get 72 MINS of video in 700MB and a Pentium66 could play it back. The quality is about 320x240 (not 100% sure, but close enough) - Think VHS/SVHS for the resulting quality.

I think you can use handbrake to convert to VCD.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally Posted by howardholton 

Try VCD. It is an MPEG1 CODEC. You get 72 MINS of video in 700MB and a Pentium66 could play it back. The quality is about 320x240 (not 100% sure, but close enough) - Think VHS/SVHS for the resulting quality.

I think you can use handbrake to convert to VCD.

I would think the G4 would be able to handle MPEG-4 just fine and maintain much better quality at similar file sizes.

I was able to run H.264 Main profile on my 1.25 GHz G4. MPEG-4 will give a much better bang for the buck on that computer though and you shouldn't even have to worry about dropping frames.

Choose the "Quicktime" preset, then for "Video Codec" switch that to FFmpeg. Set the target size somewhere between 700MB and 1 GB and go with it. It should work good enough for the situation you're talking about.

[cgc]

I didn't see HandBrake having a VCD setting (Toast does) but I managed good enough quality and a blazing RIP speed using 70% constant quality mp4 w/ aac audio. Now I'm curious why HandBrake doesn't use all four cores like it usually does but I'm content.

I highly recommend iTheater as well, ran into it and quickly replaced VLC as media player on the old G4.

P.S. Just looked at the settings and noticed I didn't click "save picture settings" or whatever it's called when I made the preset...I usually (fast) deinterlace my videos...