Ah, the mighty ffmpegX - I used to use that a lot years ago...never liked it's totally confusing video output size settings that often resulted in stretched/squashed movies despite putting the the correct sizes in....
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Video playback for a G3
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Ah, the mighty ffmpegX - I used to use that a lot years ago...never liked it's totally confusing video output size settings that often resulted in stretched/squashed movies despite putting the the correct sizes in....
Yes, the setting are...
but, you can encode MPEG1, 2 and some xvid versions. MPEG1 is a good working codec for old PPC Macs. Xvid also work "ok" in resolutions like 480x360 or lower.
Im testing Sorenson 1 but coding is really slow, and you can install Sorenson 3.1 only on 10.4 and lower.
EDIT: Correction, Sorenson 3.1 installer is working under 10.6 but sometimes the installer simply quits after start.
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Your memory plays a joke on you. All Sorenson 1 videos were normally at 480 wide, Sorenson 3 comes also in 640 wide
My Hardrive is a history archive
Ah, it was The Matrix Reloaded, and was 1000x540. Which still seems wrong. I know there was some trailer released at higher resolution than the 1280x1024 that was my normal resolution when I still used a CRT...
Max resolution at this time was called "Fullscreen" which means 640x---
look at Two Towers, there you an see all standard resolutions at this time
My tests of sorenson (coded with Squeeze) show me that a 640x348 is running laggy on a 500 Mhz G4. 480 is runnig well, but the file size for good quality video is gigantic (size of a 640x348, 95 min. Movie was over 5 Gigabyte)
look at Two Towers, there you an see all standard resolutions at this time
My tests of sorenson (coded with Squeeze) show me that a 640x348 is running laggy on a 500 Mhz G4. 480 is runnig well, but the file size for good quality video is gigantic (size of a 640x348, 95 min. Movie was over 5 Gigabyte)
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I don't have a G3 powerful enough to attempt 1080p* but 720p is definitely possible. My G3/500 isn't up to the task of playing this 720p Xvid video file but a G3/900 almost certainly could pull it off with the additional horsepower.
*(Actually, that isn't true, I forgot about my Wii-U and its G3 variant CPU: it can stream Netflix content in 1080p)
My iMac G4 1,25 GHz can play a 1280x720 Xvid Video smooth (made the picture on playback, framrate in the info panel)
The maximum of a smooth playback in OT is 1440x812. 1680x916 is a stop and go video.
With Coreplayer i can play 1980x1080 nearly smooth
I think the Wii-U has a H.264 hardware encoder for video playback.
The maximum of a smooth playback in OT is 1440x812. 1680x916 is a stop and go video.
With Coreplayer i can play 1980x1080 nearly smooth
I think the Wii-U has a H.264 hardware encoder for video playback.
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So can my Mini G4 but this topic is about the G3's, for which video playback is a much harder task.
So can my Mini G4 but this topic is about the G3's, for which video playback is a much harder task.
Your are right, but it looks like QuickTime doesn't use the Altivec engine for playback or only with big limitations.
I don't quite follow. Can you elaborate please? The Apple versions of the G3 lack the Altivec engine.
Ive heard of later 1.67ghz G4's handling 1080p modern h264 video. A 1.25ghz should handle modern standards 720p video fine.
It looks like the QuickTime Player playback performance is nearly the same on G3 and G4, when all other hardware parts are the same.
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Updating this thread with examples of video playback on my iMac G3/350 using @Dronecatcher's mViewX. This machine is considerably slower than my iBook G3/500 and it played back these Xvid encoded titles without any glitches or performance issues. I would test more videos but I'd need to set up Samba because copying them over to the G3 using USB 1.1 is excruciatingly slow.
MPlayer really is a great application - especially by virtue of it's commandline access to bend it into certain tasks.
Here's further examples of video playback with mViewX on my iMac G3/350 and it gives a very impressive showing for a computer that's over 20 years old and was never designed to be a powerhouse.
Of course, I had to include Aliens.
The video playback quality of these files ranged from flawless to near perfect. Rapid panning shots during Aliens and Ghostbusters saw the iMac struggle ever so slightly due to a lack of horsepower but the occurrences were few and far between.
Moving onto a home grown file, I dug out an old fansub project that I'd put together many moons ago and had used Xvid for the encoding.
Some segments of the video appeared to cause the iMac problems but most of it played fine. I'll have to try a few of my MPEG2 SDTV recordings and see how they fare.
Of course, I had to include Aliens.
The video playback quality of these files ranged from flawless to near perfect. Rapid panning shots during Aliens and Ghostbusters saw the iMac struggle ever so slightly due to a lack of horsepower but the occurrences were few and far between.
Moving onto a home grown file, I dug out an old fansub project that I'd put together many moons ago and had used Xvid for the encoding.
Some segments of the video appeared to cause the iMac problems but most of it played fine. I'll have to try a few of my MPEG2 SDTV recordings and see how they fare.
Here's some of my MPEG2 576i DVB-T recordings copied over from my PVR onto the iMac. I muxed them into AVI's but without any re-encoding.
It coped quite well with both of these files and the image quality is pretty decent on the iMac's 14" CRT - unlike my 50" plasma, which is brutally revealing of their low resolutions!
Moving onto the mighty Scorsese, the rapid panning shots caused the computer to struggle at moments but it never froze up and the playback remained passable.
@Dronecatcher I've noticed that when I mux the recordings into MKV's, there's no sound in mView/mViewX. Is the version of Mplayer that they use unable to fully recognise the container format?
It coped quite well with both of these files and the image quality is pretty decent on the iMac's 14" CRT - unlike my 50" plasma, which is brutally revealing of their low resolutions!
Moving onto the mighty Scorsese, the rapid panning shots caused the computer to struggle at moments but it never froze up and the playback remained passable.
@Dronecatcher I've noticed that when I mux the recordings into MKV's, there's no sound in mView/mViewX. Is the version of Mplayer that they use unable to fully recognise the container format?
Is this using the smaller mplayer executable? The smaller one is compatible with the G3 but less capable, though I have found the larger one incapable of playing some movies too.
That's the one: the 15 MB file from the "G3 mplayer" folder. It plays back anything that's been muxed into an MKV with Avidemux without sound.
I wonder if using a different program for the muxing might help? I could try FFMPEG from Terminal and use -acodec copy -vcodec copy etc for the wrapping and see if that makes a difference.
While there are ways to play x264 on a G3, you'd be much better off with DivX or XviD. Far lower CPU tax.
Thanks. You mean this one?
Video on PowerPC: Part 2 - Playback on G3
Liberating the greatest computer architecture ever created.
powerpcliberation.blogspot.com
Worth a shot. I usually take a 10 second clip and work with that - nothing worse than transcoding a full film for hours and then it doesn't work!
And here's a thought for those that have other far more powerful hardware, yet still like to watch video on an older system for kicks, like me. Use your faster hardware to transcode video into a more playable codec/wrapper/resolution. I can rip a full-length film from 1080p x264 or x265 to 480p XviD in about 10 min on my 9 year old PC with an i7 2600.