G3 & movies

[Protools5LEGuy]

For VideoCD playback http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/simple-vcd-22

Some codecs for quictime 6.1 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/quicktime-61-extras-mac-os including Indeo Video 4 & 5
and QuickTime Components BeHere iVideo, iPix, Microcosm, On2, Pulse 3D, Streambox, Zoomify, and Zygo

We could use Real Player with RealProducer Plus 7.0 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/realproducer-plus-70

It is also interesting this link http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/read-me-mom-divx-subtitle-utility It is in Polk and it load subtitle files to DivX encoded videos in QuickTime. For me is a must to have subtitles as most of what I see is on English and I try to do with Spanish/english subtitles. Maybe Graveyard can help to translate it to English/know someone talking Polk.

Offtopic:http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/btv-pro
BTV Pro is an application for the Macintosh that allows you to view, capture and edit video, and create stop-motion animations. It also has advanced capture features such as time lapse, motion detection, and DV input/output. It works with any Macintosh compatible video input source such as video input cards, TV cards, built-in video, USB, DV, and FireWire video sources. If you need a version that is compatible with a PPC Mac and OS X 10.4, please download the previous 5.4.1 version, although please note that this version is no longer officially supported.

[Patrick Philipot]

Hi guys,

2017 and I'm facing the same problem. I have an iBook G3 366 Mhz (no DVD just CD tray).

The machine is aimed to my gran' daughter (age 4). It's not for being used with Internet, but for playing simple educational games, that sort of things.

I would like to convert some Youtube videos she likes (Sesame street clip mostly) to whatever format that would be readable on such a slow machine.

Out of the box VLC 0.8.3 is not able to play Youtube videos.

My questions are :

- VLC or Quicktime ?
- what format ?
- which app to use for the conversion (I'm on an Macbook Air with Sierra)

Her birthday is february the 25th, I'm a bit in a hurry.

Thank you

[devils_advisor]

quicktime is the way to go you cant do much wrong with it. open a movie on that laptop and check what codecs you have on that particular machine by trying to save the movie or export it. thats the choice you have available. when it comes to playable movies keep the screen size small like 640x480 and the bitrate in a medium range and you should be able to get a flawless playback. let me know when you have more questions.

[IIO]

how do you capture or download youtube videos? i usually use .mp4 - which is what youtube itself uses - and that plays fine with quicktime and also with everything else.

[devils_advisor]

how do you capture or download youtube videos? i usually use .mp4 - which is what youtube itself uses - and that plays fine with quicktime and also with everything else.

he wants it playable on that laptop. he forgot to mention what os is running on it. i assume os9 and that limits the choice to keep the size down. but you still have a divx codec working in os9 but without the hd flavors

[Patrick Philipot]

Replying to myself.

I managed to get a decent video playback with Quicktime 6.4 using FFmpegXn which is a frontal for ffmpeg.

I'm downloading the video from Youtube using Keepvid in MP4 format.
In FFmpegX I select VCD for output and I play the resulting mpeg twice the size. A 15 Mo video gets bigger 40 Mo.

I  forgot to tell the G3 iBook runs Panther.

[devils_advisor]

look into divx, gives you decent quality and relative small file size. i can fit 4 or 5 movies on a cd and they still look good on a tv screen.

[IIO]

he wants it playable on that laptop.

i dont know of any sites or applications which wouldnt let you choose the size of the video.
myself i prefer to use websites because file conversion only takes like 3 seconds.
but even using apps one would be good advised not to download with highest resolution and then convert in order to be able to play

[jt]

I have much more simple needs, but this looks like the thread for it:

I'm looking for a PCI sound card to output the Surround Sound feed from DVD playback to a 5.1 System? It'd need to run under OS9 of course and I haven't the foggiest if there ever was such a thing? PAS16 and SAII NuBus cards would be the full extent of my experience.

Machine:
Beige G3 DT 266 Rev.2
ATI Rage 128 w/DVD Daughtercard

Silly project:
Building a newer version of the 6360BenchMac for the hardware hacking workbench. That one served up PDF documentation and played selections from the VHS collection while I did all manner of unnatural things to the 68K Mac collection. Old DVD movies have sunk to the $1 level, so I'm upgrading the media and playing with the unloved and much neglected G3 that showed up in the collection at some point.

I've been using an old 2.1 computer speaker setup for audio off the headset jack of the VCR fed 6360. Will that continue to be the case for the G3 or is there a stairway to the heaven of 5.1 for OS9 running on a 2UBG3 rackmount build?

TIA for your patience and any help with this.

[nanopico]

I know the m-audio delta 1010 did this for windows and os x and I thought os 9.  I can check on that.

[IIO]

i believe any soundcard with enough channels would do, but what about the software? is there a OS9 DVD player which outputs more than stereo to the soundmanager?

to my knowledge, the usual suspects such as quicktime player, media cleaner, wont support it.

it shall be easier to use something which supports ASIO. but among ASIO aps it is difficult to find somehting which can play moving images fullscreen.

in OSX VLC and toast should both work.

[MacOS Plus]

  I was intrigued by the DVD 5.1 surround output question since I'd never put any though into it before, so I spent some time roaming the internet for information.  The problem does actually seem to be related to software - no actual software audio decoding apps in OS 9 or even in early versions of OS X.  From what I read, Sound Blaster Live! for Macintosh could be configured to pass an untouched AC-3 signal to its digital output, but this depended on the software source being able to supply an AC-3 signal to the SB.

I think I found what you need though:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/wired4dvd/




  It probably performs better than your ATI card too.  Hardware requirements are extremely low, and it's supposed to work all the way back to Mac OS 8.0!

Of course now the biggest challenge will be finding one of these cards nowadays...

[IIO]

"what? you don't have HDMI at your G4?""

[IIO]

"simply plug this small utility into your iphone and you can carry your home theater with you when cycling or mountain climbing"

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Home/AV-Receivers/Pioneer+Receivers/VSX-820-K

[ck]

In 2005-2006, this G3 was still able to play movies, it even played youtube videos for a while. Maybe one of you can remember what codec was usually used back then for videos. My guess would be something like divx 3 or 4 maybe.

In '05-'06 youtube videos had a resolution of 320 by 240. They were encoded with the Sorenson Spark codec, which is H263-based, and used MP3 mono audio, not stereo. Here's an article discussing new video codecs for flash 8 during that same time:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090206142709/http://kaourantin.net/2005/08/quest-for-new-video-codec-in-flash-8.html

[ck]

I wasn't able to edit my post, so I'm appending with this one, sorry about that!

So Graveyard was looking to help a friend with a G3 to playback videos back in 2014, then in 2017, Patrick asked the same for his granddaughter with a G3 mac for her birthday. It's amazing to see old macs still getting some love from time to time! 

With the accessibility of both intel macs and win machines, possibly including virtual ones with emulation like qemu, converting youtube videos in mp4 formats to xvid (480p) or vcd (360p) formats that can fit on an empty cd or firewire external should not be hard.

Once converted properly, Quicktime in OS 9 can play XviD files with the right codec installed, and as Graveyard finally recalled himself, VCD CDs can be played with software VCD players under OS 9 and a mac with a CD-ROM. I know because I used to play VCD disks myself in macs as far back as Mac OS 8.1 and macs the Powerbook 1400cs as well as the 3400c and their equivalent desktop models. XviD videos are easier to store and playback on hard drives, but VCDs can make up a simple CD library. I can lookup the VCD player that works in OS 8.1, but Quicktime 6.0.3 and maybe earlier versions I believe may also work with VCD CDs natively.

It's also helpful to know that encoding video files can be achieved on windows for playback on a mac. XMedia Recode is one of many encoders that can convert an mp4 or mkv video into both an VCD disk image or AVI video file. I mentioned this one simply because it happens to be free and it's one I've personally found to be pretty easy to use.

I almost forgot to mention that both the Sorenson and Cinepak codecs, which are even older mac-compatible video formats, can output video with quality that's similar to VCD. The issue with those and other older formats is one of how and where to encode with those formats. Quicktime 7 (once it is registered) is capable of this type of conversion, and it can be installed in newer versions of OS X.

Of the two codecs, Cinepak can also playback on faster '40 68k macs as well as in emulation using Basilisk II. If the video is kept small enough in dimensions, bitrate and audio, it's possible to play video on older macs using Quicktime 2.5, but the playback quality and size of the video will not match the VCD and XVID video formats.