Best Video Codec for a retired iBook G4?

[borbas.geri]

Hello community,

what is the best video codec for an iBook G4?
My little girl is about to use it to watch Peppa. 😅

The top priority is battery life (before file size and quality).

I tried Xvid with VLC so far, works fine, but I'd be interested in more streamlined solutions if any.
Any H.264 is just too laggy of course. Should I try MOV / with Quicktime player? Or a simple MPG?

Bonus: what converter / player do you recommend?

 

[Dronecatcher]

Hello community,

what is the best video codec for an iBook G4?
My little girl is about to use it to watch Peppa. 😅

The top priority is battery life (before file size and quality).

I tried Xvid with VLC so far, works fine, but I'd be interested in more streamlined solutions if any.
Any H.264 is just too laggy of course. Should I try MOV / with Quicktime player? Or a simple MPG?

Bonus: what converter / player do you recommend?

Try MPEG Streamclip exporting to MPEG4 with Apple Compressor - learn how to alter the bitrate for video and audio to go as low as quality will allow.
Use MPlayer for playback, it's more efficient than VLC and QuickTime.

 

[bobesch]

Hello community,
what is the best video codec for an iBook G4?
My little girl is about to use it to watch Peppa. 😅
The top priority is battery life (before file size and quality).
I tried Xvid with VLC so far, works fine, but I'd be interested in more streamlined solutions if any.
Any H.264 is just too laggy of course. Should I try MOV / with Quicktime player? Or a simple MPG?
Bonus: what converter / player do you recommend?

Codec: MPEG2, MP4(240p) ...
Player: CorePlayer
Converter: Handbrake

 

[Dronecatcher]

You could also try this converter I put together a while ago:

Video Player and Converter For G3

After a recent thread about video playback on a G3 I've bundled my mplayer scripts with an ffmpeg conversion script to produce what I've found to be an optimal video format on low powered G3s. Download the package here and follow the included instructions or read below. After trying various...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[borbas.geri]

Thanks for getting back @Dronecatcher @bobesch!

Unfortunately, MPEG Streamclip / G3V does not run on Catalina (I do conversion there).
In Handbrake I found MPEG-4 just fine 🎉, but no specific "Apple" MPEG4 Compressor.

Can I perhaps add some command line parameters in the "Encoder Options:" field to make it "Apple" compressor? Is that a significant difference while decoding / playback?

 

[TzunamiOSX]

I dont know why, but XVID with MP3 need much less CPU power then the MPEG4 Basic Codec (Best results with Coreplayer). Goonies at 1280x528 (720p) need around 60-70% CPU on my iMacG4 1,25 Ghz.

You can also encode to MPEG2 (best playback as VIDEO_TS and Apple DVD player)

For coding i will use ffmpegX, but settings are a bit complicated

If you have a G4 with more then 1,2 GHz you can also use H.264 but you must set some boxes in Handbrake [resolution around (1024)720x576]

 

[Dronecatcher]

In Handbrake I found MPEG-4 just fine 🎉, but no specific "Apple" MPEG4 Compressor.

I wouldn't worry about that, just edit a video into a 10 second clip and do various tests to bring the CPU use down.
I did a quick test on a downloaded Peppa vid and setting audio to 22khz/64kbps/mono and video to 300kbps/10FPS with MPEG4 halved the CPU use from the original h264.

 

[borbas.geri]

Thanks again, folks!
I'm almost done converting the entire library to MPEG4.

If it drains the battery too fast, perhaps I'll give Xvid a go.
@TzunamiOSX, what do you recommend for batch Xvid encoding?

Where can I download CorePlayer?
Google results are somewhat ambiguous...

 

[Dronecatcher]

Where can I download CorePlayer?

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/coreplayer-mobile-os-x

Don't be worried by the legality of this - myself and others tried contacting the authors many times to buy a licence with no response.

 

[TzunamiOSX]

@TzunamiOSX, what do you recommend for batch Xvid encoding?

Im using ffmpegX for this. https://www.ffmpegx.com/download.html (this is a 32Bit App)

If you want to resize you can calculate with the rule of three (i have a Dashbord app called Dreisatz)

XVID ffmpeg or mencoder (one is faster, i thic it was ffmpeg)

If you change the tab you can get a Apple Script Error, ignore it (if you know the exact framerate you can also select it, then you dont get an error).

For better quality you can select Options and "High Quality" but this need more time.