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Sealobo · Jun 11, 2009, 01:41 PM

I installed Safari 4 just now and guess what... now even the HQ clips played choppy! LOL~

starting up firefox...

Phosphor · Jun 11, 2009, 05:24 PM

Just popped in to offer a little commiseration, confirmation, observation and a little old-fashioned whining. It follows along with much that has been posted here already.

First off, I have crappy hardware: eMac 1.0 GHz/ATI graphics 32 MB/640 MB RAM (128MB of which just crapped out on me yesterday), running Tiger 10.4.11, and as of this writing, reasonably recent Firefox (v 3.0.6) and Flash plugin (10.something-or-other). I suck my content through an above average, consistent, robust Comcast 6.0 Mbps pipe.

Vimeo has ALWAYS been crappy for me. Every. Single. Time. Even when I wait for the entire file to load before hitting the "Go" button. If I want to watch Vimeo-hosted stuff, I gank it to my desktop and open it from there.

YouTube is hit or miss for me. I've done some experimentation with my own uploads, and I'm convinced that in order to get the best playback quality (even on my crappy gear) there must be certain procedures and settings to use from the beginning of production through to export and upload. I just haven't nailed down exactly what they all are yet. Don't have the time or inclination to get it all sussed.

There are YouTube videos that I run across that play pretty well all the way through, even in HD, and even if I don't wait for the whole file to load first. Not many, but some. From my casual pattern-recognition, these almost always seem to be generated professionally, and/or by people/companies that have discovered that magical and (as far as I've been able to find) undocumented set of production, and export procedures and settings. But just because they might be professionally produced doesn't mean that they will work well. I've also seen plenty of high-profile producers whose YouyTube videos don't play worth sh¡t. When there are amateur videos that play well, they are usually comprised of imagery that is quite static. Or, in the case of "busy" dynamic imagery, perhaps these amateurs have just accidentally stumbled upon a workflow that works well, or they have experimented like I have and made note of what works best.

Now, compare all of that crap-n-hassle of Flash-wrapped video to what happens when I grab the video podcasts via the iTunes store of the TED conference talks. Even on my crappy hardware I'm able to stream them at high quality in QT and they are clean, smooth and nearly flawless. With NO stuttering.

I'm led to believe that the problems many of us are complaining about here are ALL related to Flash encoding and how they are streamed.

Todd Madson · 11:48 AM

Update.

I recently had issues with my video card (Radeon 9600XT with 128 megs) and figured if I was going to swap it,
I was going to try and get the 100 ton Gorilla of PowerMac G5 video cards: an nVidia GeForce 7800 with 256
megs and clocked to 460 mhz GPU / 650 mhz memory.

Here's the performance I got before with OpenGL on my Radeon 9600XT:

(after shot moved to post after next due to testing error...)

reader50 · Dec 9, 2009, 11:34 PM

Todd, did you notice you did the 9600 test in 32 bit color, and the 7800 test in 16 bit?

Todd Madson · 11:51 AM

I did now.

I figured if this card can't hack it then Flash is so poorly coded and or youtube utilizes flash in such a hackjob way
that it's MEANT to do this.

Now for the test reveal.

It IS possible for a PowerMac G5 to run Youtube HD video BUT there are some caveats.

-I shut off file sharing, web sharing and BOINC and any other background/foreground application but Safari.

Here's a still of Robin Moore's video "Performance" in HD on Youtube.

-When the video was actually loading the performance was still poor.
-Once the video was fully loaded the performance was still poor.
-Sliding the the round icon back to the beginning and LO AND BEHOLD it PLAYED FINE.
-You could see that it was this configuration was the bare minimum for decent performance with Flash HD.
-However, ANY other processor intensive background app slowed the video framerate visibly.
-Bring up a second browser window while this was playing that had a flash ad on it killed the framerate too.
-Note that BOTH 2.5 ghz cpus were being stressed rather significantly just to play this particular video.
-The same video plays just fine without the CPU hit when fished from the browser cache to the desktop in VLC.

-This machine is a 2.5 ghz dual G5 with 7 gigs of ram, an nVidia 7800GS SC video card with 256 megs of ram,
the internal drive is a 1.5 TB 7200 rpm (32-meg cache) Seagate Barracuda running MacOS X 10.58.

More to come...

Todd Madson · 11:59 AM

More:

Safari seemed most effected by the video playing while still loading.

Firefox is a complicated story because I have several different development builds by different people
and found wildly different results between the two that I've been using. I was surprised at this.

Minefield 3.x is a G5 specific development build.
This was utterly strange: the video playback while loading was shaky but acceptable but
once loading completed it was somewhat worse. Rewinding and then playing didn't help.

Shiretoko is 3.x is another G5 specific development build.
This one loaded shakily but played and was "decent" when playing fully loaded but never
really gave me the framerates of Opera/Safari/Camino.

Opera 10.10 gave me the best results of all while loading or playing back youtube video.
This is the universal binary version. That's the winner browser IMO.

So there you have it. My guess? This card would work well in a G5 2.5, 2.7 all the way to a Quad
if you have AGP slots. I don't know how it would work in a G5 2.0.

This is the spec and stats for the card and also the display I am using for these tests.
My ISP is 12-megabit Qwest Fiber.

Todd Madson · 11:54 AM

My findings? It's Youtube. Flash certainly is a factor but youtube also.

The previous links for Vimeo video of the Model Rocket club footage here:
HD CATO Rocketry Club Launch Highlights #139 July 19,2008 on Vimeo

and the Monarch butterfly hatching video here:
Monarch Butterfly Hatching By SAMDOG Films On ExposureRoom

Ran great on my old card but run the best I've seen yet in the nVidia 7800gs.

Definetely my testing shows that Youtube is using Flash in such a way that it requires boatloads of cpu power and a more than decent video card.

We could say that the G5 and indeed AGP are standards that have gone the way of the dinosaur. I doubt I'll find a faster AGP card that will function in this computer, they say it is about 25% faster than an X850XT.

But what I'd really like to see is the same flash videos from youtube up at Vimeo or the Exposureroom site and see the difference in performance. Then you know it's some unholy combination of Adobe and Youtube technologies functioning improperly together.

That might be my next test. Anyway, FWIW you can at least get it to work now if you can find one of these flashed cards.
The 7800 was never available for the G5 because when it came out the last generation of dualcore G5 machines came out
with PCI express cards. I was able to source one of these cards (NOT Macanix) and it has made a difference for sure.

Questions?

reader50 · Dec 10, 2009, 02:19 PM

What card did you get, and was it difficult to flash? I might be interested in a 2nd 7800 (PCIe version) for extra monitors. Or to put each monitor on it's own card.

Todd Madson · Dec 10, 2009, 04:00 PM

I actually bought the card from a vendor who had already flashed it. It's an EVGA brand 7800GS SC.

In the G4 days I'd flashed a Radeon 8500 for my old G4 400 and I had to put the card in a PC, flash it
there, then move it over to the Mac.

In this case just FINDING the card would be difficult and my 9600XT was on its last legs and just paid
for the last one I could find.

The guy I bought it from is Christian Guastella at Old-Macs.com.
He has an info page about my card here: Old-Macs.com EVGA nVidia 7800 GS CO for Apple PowerMac G5 8X AGP

You might ask him about the XFX nVidia 7800 GS Extreme that he has for sale (around $166)
Link: Old-Macs.com XFX nVidia 7800 GS Extreme 256mb for Apple PowerMac G5 8X AGP
I'd ask to see if he can play HD youtube videos with that card, I can't be sure although he obliged
my requests to test X-Plane to see what kind of framerates he could get with the card I bought.

He said that card was a little slower than the one I bought and (running 440/650 instead of 460/675).

If you do order from him let him know I sent you.

If not, you'd have to find a similar card and then find the ROM for that card from the MacElite and
make sure the ROM on the card is big enough to fit the Macrom for that card is what I understand
needs to be done.

Also, I needed to install a molex splitter so the card is drawing power from the same power that
the Superdrive is drawing from. It was fairly easy to install for the mechanically/electronically minded.
These cards draw power that is more than the AGP slot can provide.

The card came with the splitter, and there is a PDF with instructions on how to remove/reseat the drive etc.

Big Mac · Dec 10, 2009, 08:58 PM

Nice work, Todd. I noted recently the performance problems the brand new iMacs were having with Flash, so at least G5 owners don't have to feel that bad.

tooki · Dec 13, 2009, 05:02 AM

Since the problem is rarely CPU or GPU limitations, testing and optimizing those doesn't help a whole lot. Instead, the question is: how do I free YouTube from its awful Flash wrapper?

The answer: Safari with Click2Flash. It stops Flash from loading automatically, which saves tons of CPU to begin with, and here's the kicker: there's an option in its preferences to replace YouTube's Flash player with the h.264 version which is then played by Safari natively using QuickTime. (This is what Apple TV, iPhone, and iPod touch do.) You can guess how much better it is...

Hope this helps!

Big Mac · Dec 13, 2009, 06:19 AM

Really, I wasn't aware of the h.264 twist. That's great, I'll have to try it.

Todd Madson · Dec 18, 2009, 08:51 PM

Tooki: Thanks a million, I was also unaware of that.

Speaking of graphics in general - my friend told me to benchmark my computer after I put the new card in.

I have all the old benching tools but am fond of the one the folks at Geekbench have put there since it's not like Xbench that seemed to favor Radeon
96/9800s over other cards that were actually faster and less specific than cinebench because that app seemed to be all about selling rendering software even
though some of the displays were cool.

I said "wait a second, why should I bench using a benching tool that doesn't actually bench the graphics subsystems. He said try it anyway and I did and was
quite surprised. In the past, I've benched my system and it's gotten between 2009 and 2224 and I couldn't get it to budge much past that no matter what I did
in the past.

NOW with the new card I'm benching as high as 2312 which brings this machine squarely into the performance range of the 2.7 ghz G5 computers. In fact,
some of the 2.7's don't perform as well as my 2.5.

So far as I know (there are over 100 pages of benched G5 PowerMacs at the geekbench website, I'm not going to check them all) my G5 2.5 dual is the only one
in the list that's benching at the level of a 2.7 when not actually being one. Curious.

So apparently the higher memory/faster clock of the graphics card has some effect on overall performance.

Again Tooki, thank you hugely for your suggestion. I can't believe nobody suggested it before either.

tooki · Dec 19, 2009, 03:22 PM

Isn't it a godsend? My MacBook is so much happier not having to load f****ng Flash ads on every damned page.

It also has a handy little gear menu to let you download the h.624 version of Youtube. Now if they'd only make it work on Viddler and Vimeo, etc....

Todd Madson · Jan 6, 2010, 05:48 PM

All I know is I'm using Opera more than any other browser now even though most of my bookmarks are in Safari because
with this computer with this video card, I almost don't need Click2flash. I finally don't feel like a third class webizen.

mabaker303 · Jan 17, 2010, 03:24 PM

There are users reporting that the new Flash player 10.1 beta is improving the situation slightly?

Any reports?

I installed it on my Powermac g4 and youtube is more fluid indeed, not yet as fluid as under Flash Player 8, tho.

It's definitely a step in the right direction. Let's wait for the Final release.

william604 · Jan 27, 2010, 05:19 PM

I installed the beta on my Dual 2.0 G and noticed a dramatic difference in playback. It definitely solved the problem for me.

travr1131 · Jan 31, 2010, 04:11 PM

Installed the Flash beta 10.1 and now I can play 1080p HD on youtube smoothly. It was unplayable before. Thanks for this thread, it was very helpful! The G5 keeps truckin' on!

System:

G5 Quad 2.5Ghz PowerMac
10GB RAM
7800GT 256MB running 2 28" LCD at 1920x1200 each

Doc HM · Jan 31, 2010, 04:27 PM

Click2Flash is a godsend on my slower Macs. It's also a godsend on my MacBook Pro, just because it bins Flash.

andi*pandi · Feb 5, 2010, 03:23 PM

I thought my flash issues were because I was running old versions of firefox and flash plugin. Then I upgraded and still had choppy playback, and I was going to blame comcast or dear ol' emac. Now perhaps there is hope. Thanks!

mabaker303 · Mar 22, 2010, 06:52 PM

Flash Beta 3 is out, guys! Please report in with your results!

Adobe Labs - Downloads: Flash Player 10.1

I can say the CPU usage is more or less the same here BUT the playback is definitely smoother now.

macaddict0001 · Mar 22, 2010, 08:36 PM

Originally Posted by tooki

Since the problem is rarely CPU or GPU limitations, testing and optimizing those doesn't help a whole lot. Instead, the question is: how do I free YouTube from its awful Flash wrapper?

The answer: Safari with Click2Flash. It stops Flash from loading automatically, which saves tons of CPU to begin with, and here's the kicker: there's an option in its preferences to replace YouTube's Flash player with the h.264 version which is then played by Safari natively using QuickTime. (This is what Apple TV, iPhone, and iPod touch do.) You can guess how much better it is...

Hope this helps!

I know its late but the thread is still active so, thanks Tooki.

Todd Madson · Apr 3, 2010, 09:34 PM

Question: Did you download the beta version or the debug beta version? I'll post more when I get results from you all.

Todd Madson · Apr 6, 2010, 07:03 PM

Update: my performance actually seems to have gotten WORSE. I can't believe it!

reader50 · Apr 6, 2010, 08:21 PM

Did you uninstall the previous beta first? Adobe recommends that, and has an uninstall utility on their beta page.

Todd Madson · Apr 8, 2010, 05:24 PM

I better do that, this is weird, it's also scrambling most of my pages where flash video shows. Yikes.

Todd Madson · Apr 8, 2010, 05:52 PM

OK - -significant improvement in performance with RC1.

Testing commencing. I'll be back.

Todd Madson · Apr 8, 2010, 06:21 PM

I was able to play any 720p video just fine.
So far so good.

I was even able to play a 1080p video just fine but only by going under Safari's "window" menu, selecting the "activity" menu and clicking on file
once downloaded (you'll see the numbers scrolling up and up and up, that's the video). It played in Safari thru flash pretty much spot-on.

Direct from youtube it still plays the sound fine but video stutters and halts and lags and - I seriously think this is a youtube problem because
the videos above I quoted from before play fine.

Anyway, for those with RC1 click here.
YouTube - Nvidia PureVideo HD 1080p Test

Try this one. And if it doesn't play, go to window, then activity and look for the scrolling numbers.
Double click and it should open in a Safari window and play without the problems.

Todd Madson · 01:25 AM

Update - now we're up to the "10.1 Release Candidate 5" status. I'm afraid things haven't gotten THAT much better.

In order to test this I:
shut off my webserver
shut off seti at home (boinc)
shut off my dyndns daemon
shut off my istat daemon for my iphone
ran the nvidia purevideo hd video at youtube in 1080p.
i right clicked on the video display and verified hardware acceleration was enabled.
I let the video stream to the end then watched - audio was fine, video was choppy
I could play it fine in 720p but not 1080p.
natively, saved to my desktop this content could play acceptably.

Try it at labs.adobe.com.

Face it, Flash/Youtube together just sucks to put it bluntly.
I can only get it to play properly under very controlled circumstances. In other words - no other apps running and basically giving all resources to the darn video card.

That's with a video card that exceeds the performance of ANY video card ever shipped with an AGP power mac.

Most people just aren't going to have that kind of oomph. But for 720p it's alright. 1080p - iffy.

No problems with some other video services. No problems with native mpeg playback. Just flash.

Todd Madson · Jun 2, 2010, 07:03 PM

Update: I reported several bugs with this and Adobe confirmed three of them. More as I get it!

reader50 · Jun 2, 2010, 07:14 PM

Good results there. My bug reports to Apple tend to get brushed off. Likewise with Highpoint.

Todd Madson · Jun 3, 2010, 11:09 PM

RC7 is out as of today at labs.adobe.com. Try it!

mabaker303 · Jun 4, 2010, 06:02 PM

To be honest on all my PPC Macs the performance improved when I DISABLED “hardware acceleration”.

Does someone share the same experience?

sek929 · Jun 7, 2010, 12:14 PM

Wow, that video Todd linked to a few posts back brings my C2D iMac to an absolute CRAWL. Both cores pegged, video is a slide show.

Zipped over to Apple Trailers, watched the 1080p Prince of Persia trailer. Both cores at 50%, smooth as silk, didn't even stutter when I switched to dashboard.

Flash video can suck it.

voo · Jun 7, 2010, 09:14 PM

Safari 5 really has made one heck of a huge difference. Obviously for HTML5. Viewing HTML5 on Youtube use to be murder for me. Nearly 100% CPU on a Dual 2.7. Now with Safari 5 with some 720 clips I could be sitting 50% with 720.

This one use to be really laggy for me. YouTube - Asteroid Impact (HD)

Now it's as smooth as silk. About 55 - 60% CPU. Click2flash still works with Safari 5.

This 5 year old Mac feels like it's had new love.

Big Mac · Jun 7, 2010, 10:36 PM

Good to hear, voo.

voo · Jun 8, 2010, 08:40 PM

Also, running this in 1080p plays fluid with a good 30 - 40% free CPU to spare. YouTube - Micmacs: trailer HD 1080

Dependent on what 1080p clip the lowest it'll go there's about 20 - 30% free. Still runs fluid with 10 apps, iTunes, file sharing as well as other things and a few more Safari windows running in the background.

YouTube - Michael Jackson Human Nature Extended 1080 HD Version This Is It Live Vocals 2009

This one wont play fluid in 1080 since it's Flash only. YouTube - TRON LEGACY Trailer #2

Todd Madson · Jun 11, 2010, 08:17 AM

Originally Posted by voo

Safari 5 really has made one heck of a huge difference. Obviously for HTML5. Viewing HTML5 on Youtube use to be murder for me. Nearly 100% CPU on a Dual 2.7. Now with Safari 5 with some 720 clips I could be sitting 50% with 720.

This one use to be really laggy for me. YouTube - Asteroid Impact (HD)

Now it's as smooth as silk. About 55 - 60% CPU. Click2flash still works with Safari 5.

This 5 year old Mac feels like it's had new love.

That asteroid one is only 720p on the top end from what I can see.

This is the video that I've been playing as a testing platform and I also have the native .MP4 file:

YouTube - Nvidia PureVideo HD 1080p Test

Todd Madson · Jun 11, 2010, 08:45 AM

They released 10.1 of Flash yesterday, very likely in response to the security loophole that malware writers on the windows platform are exploiting to great effect.

OK - a final test that will get your G5 Mac playing video the best it ever will:

First go here and grab Mplayer Mac OS X Extended:
MPlayer OSX Extended

In the preferences of the player insure this codec is selected since that's the multitheaded one that works across multiple processors or cores (see the blue bar highlighting the correct codec below in the pic):

Now in your Safari browser first play this:
YouTube - Nvidia PureVideo HD 1080p Test
Watch in both 720 and 1080 note the performance.

Now download these:
http://pod.ath.cx/video/1080/PureVideoHD1080Test.mp4
(107 megs) and
http://pod.ath.cx/video/720/PureVideoHD720Test.mp4
(63 megs)

Contrast and compare the youtube playback with the native files in Mplayer OS X Extended.
For best results don't have anything else running in the background.

Now what you'll want to do is opt into the HTML5 beta at youtube here:
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

That will get you off of flash and onto HTML5 in the latest builds of Safari which work TONS better
than Flash at 1080 resolution and uses far less cpu overhead.

Let me know how that works for you.

Todd Madson · Jun 11, 2010, 03:16 PM

I got an e-mail from Adobe today confirming that PPC 1080P playback thru youtube (and presumably other
flash sites like Vimeo etc) have problems with frames dropping etc.

They filed this as bug #2631223 internally.

Big Mac · Jun 13, 2010, 02:57 AM

They just figured that out?

voo · Jun 13, 2010, 09:44 PM

Originally Posted by Todd Madson

Now what you'll want to do is opt into the HTML5 beta at youtube here:
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

That will get you off of flash and onto HTML5 in the latest builds of Safari which work TONS better
than Flash at 1080 resolution and uses far less cpu overhead.

Let me know how that works for you.

Is this aimed at me or for anyone else thats reading?... this is why I said the asteroid and other 720/1080 clips work flawless between Safari 5 working better for HTML5 and part of the Youtube beta as well as that NVIDIA Purevideo.

You can't just be not logged into YouTube or not be part of the HTML5 beta to view it this way. I would have thought you had sussed this from my post.

Yes, I do tend to view it the larger view. However I tend not to do it often as the progress bars and buttons tend to get cluttered and separated from the glitches in the UI expanding and contracting from time to time. Ending up usually having to refresh the video so the UI displays normally again.

Originally Posted by Big Mac

They just figured that out?

No kidding. Is that how it works?... pay peanuts get monkeys. ¬_¬

Todd Madson · Jun 21, 2010, 06:06 PM

Ah it was aimed at anyone still having problems. This thread just seemed to be G5 owners watching HD video from streaming flash
video services, youtube in particular.

mabaker303 · Sep 19, 2010, 09:12 AM

Adobe released a beta version of 64bit Flash Player - is it working for the G5 processors (which have been 64bit all along)?

Power-pc-G5 · Sep 22, 2010, 07:11 PM

"Adobe released a beta version of 64bit Flash Player - is it working for the G5 processors (which have been 64bit all along)?"

I too have have wondered about that , but fear the worst. Although touted originally as a true 64 bit system , the software and support was way behind; i believe throughout the remaining ppc period. After the Powerpc build of OSX was capped at Mac osx 10.5.8 , coupled with supporting developer software set at that , i think we are on short path to nothing. Off course Adobe has put the march on for not supporting the PPC in future by releasing non compatible releases on their premier software suites. I could be talking absolute nonsense, but thats just a non tech sum up of what i have found.

Todd Madson · Sep 22, 2010, 07:16 PM

Can't try it any longer folks. My G5 died last week. I've transplanted my dual 1.5 TB drives into a FW800 case and is attached to my iMac Corei7.

Bums me out a little, that computer only lasted a little over 5 years - least long lasting Mac I've owned and the most expensive of the ones I've gotten.

reader50 · Sep 23, 2010, 02:11 AM

Very sad news.

Spheric Harlot · Sep 23, 2010, 09:56 AM

Does it really matter whether Flash is 64-bit?

Person Man · Sep 29, 2010, 11:40 AM

Originally Posted by Todd Madson

Can't try it any longer folks. My G5 died last week. I've transplanted my dual 1.5 TB drives into a FW800 case and is attached to my iMac Corei7.

Bums me out a little, that computer only lasted a little over 5 years - least long lasting Mac I've owned and the most expensive of the ones I've gotten.

Yeah, mine lasted about 5 years too before the motherboard died.

mabaker · Feb 18, 2011, 06:52 PM

Adobe discontinued support for PPC with the newest Flash player.

Fortunately we still have half-decent 10.1 release.