G3 & movies

[MacTron]

Where?

Here:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=306.0;attach=133

[IIO]

it is amazing that in 4 months nobody is able to answer the qustion about the codec and format but discuss chinese bronze swords and toilet cleaning methods instead.

i believe that any G3 will be able to play PAL/SECAM sized .mov files with H263 codec in fullscreen, even any PPC 604 should be able to do that.

eventually other codecs such as sorenson are a bit easier on CPU, but i´ve never compared that.

a G4 with gefroce 4 can play PAL/SECAM sized movies uncompressed (which is around 31 mb/s). so anything slower must use compression, but one cheap enough to decode in realtime.

[Protools5LEGuy]

it is amazing that in 4 months nobody is able to answer the qustion about the codec and format but discuss chinese bronze swords and toilet cleaning methods instead.

 
Let us talk formats.
Pal 720*576@25 fps
Ntsc 720*480@30 fps
Those are called standard resolution SD
Half full HD (1920/2) * (1080/2)= 960*540 this resolution was promoted on PIXAR to use the PIXLET CODEC on Panther.
720p 1280*720 it can be 24, 25 or 30 fps
There are more, but I will stop here about formats.

CODECs

As IIO said, sorenson should be cool for G3s...

DVD playback means MPEG2 decoding abilities.
DivX and Xvid are different revisions of MPEG4
Sorenson is a CODEC
INDEO was another.
H263 is a CODEC developed for the first generation of mobile phones to see video on low end resolutions on the best devices in that age.
H264 is the CODEC used in most android phones and 90% of video downloads today.
I am not sure if DV is another CODEC or a MPEG2 name.
I think almost every videoeditor has its own CODECs. Pinnacle, matrox, avid an others.
Some CODECs are tied to a given resolution.

[Protools5LEGuy]

Worth mentioning that quicktime is a audio/video container file, exactly the same than avi (audio/video interlived)
It means that inside a mov or a avi you can find any CODEC.
The most popular are h264, Xvid and DivX. But maybe we should try with the older ones. Mpeg, mpeg2, MJPEG , DV, sorenson and indeo. Possibly, macromedia has some own.
 Flash video is possibly another alternative, but for classic...
Also I have pointed to the Windows Media Player for OS9. Maybe WMV runs better that we thought.
We do not mind the time spent in converting files. We will come to the method later...
 We want to benchmark the fps that graveyard's friend G3 can perform to choose the best performance-codec for G3@400...

[Graveyard]

Ok, so to put things straight, i have the Ruby iMac G3 400Mhz DV, and he got the Blueberry. Both have identical specs, different colors. They both have the Ati Rage 128 Pro graphics chip.
So how do you want me to benchmark it? What kind of benchmark did you have in mind?

[Protools5LEGuy]

What kind of benchmark did you have in mind?

frames per second fps.
Given a movie, we will try different CODEC to find the one that outputs more fps without skipping frames. 15 frames is not enought. It should be more than 20 (25 ideal).
We should choose the videoconverter too. It should let us use the CODECs we have been talking.

[Graveyard]

I have the feeling i was misunderstood from the start or that the purpose of this conversation was lost along the way. As i said before, i was looking for some info on what codec and resolution you guys might think would be ok to use, in order to convert some movies so my friend can watch them on a G3 iMac. The darn discussion deviated far from what i was asking... I see no reason for benchmarks and digging deep into what a codec does, or what a graphics chip is capable of.
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.

[Protools5LEGuy]

I have the feeling that I hijacked the post, but we were still talking about CODECs in OS9. To answer graveyard's question, I would use divx CODEC ( easier for the cpu than Xvid) with the 3ivx drivers Mactron mentioned. Probably, at first with 320*200 resolution. And I would increase bit rate and resolution until the frames dropped make it still watchable (20 frames).
What software would you use to convert the files to be G3 playable?

[MacTron]

Well, I'll try to be more accurate:

Divx/Xvid/h262 v2 are the same encoding standard, being a hack of Microsoft Mpg4 (mpg4 v2) to be used in .avi files with Mp3 audio. And still is used today (alongside h264 and .mkv that can't be decoded in Mac Os 9).

So you have to install Divx 5.1 (to decode .avi with Mp3 audio) and 3IVX v 4.5 because is the faster Divx/Xvid/h 262 v2 available for Mac Os 9.

(By the way 3IVX 4.5 also is the faster Mpeg4 standar decoder)

Please read it again

With this you can see any today movie. Just take care that the file format is .avi, the audio codec is Mp3 and the video codec is Divx/Xvid and the video size are (for a G3 around 500 Mhz) NTSC or PAL standard or below.

The audio codec can be AAC or AC3 also. And the video codec can be FFMPEG Mpeg4 or H263 or MPEG4, But this is another history...

[IIO]

now i forget my own call from above - and join the offtopic talk!

If you use UNCOMPRESSED video, teorically you can play HD on OS9

i´d doubt that this will happen ... on a low end mac.

an 1Ghz SP G4 with geforce 4 MX is able to play about half of that size.

for uncompressed HD-sized movies you would probably need a dual prozessor and a top noth graphics card.

you would also almost need SATA to be able to play such a file from disk (dont forget that there is also the audio track(s) which have to be read)

720p has like 70mb/s and 1020p has like 160mb/s, and that is for RGB or CMY, if you have 4 channels it is 33% more.

it would be interesting to compare codecs and formats, but unfortunatrely the nature of playing video has it that a "CPU check" is impossible because video just stutters or skips frames like someone mentioned above.

[Protools5LEGuy]

We could consider HD anything over 720*576 

An 721*577 video could be considered HD 

IIO has said uncompressed is too much data for low end macs. Mactron has a Acard 64bit card that gives the maximum I/O from drives on OS9.  I mean Mb/s. And was not far from the smaller formats. On powermacs is doable, I think.
On iBooks and iMacs uncompressed video it is impossible just for been udma2 and 3. Not even ata-33 speeds.  So, 33 Mb/s is out of reach.
Maybe a divx or sorenson video with the bitrate acording to the I/O of the machine can do HD at 10-15 frames on low end G4s

Mpeg2 DVD and supervideoCD is a CODEC that some ati rage pro can decode via hardware.
That is 720*576 in PAL.
Maybe an MPEG2 HD video is playable thru them.

 I see that MPEG4 is too much for a G3@400, but maybe MPEG2 or sorenson is doable.

I remember back in 2001 I saw with some friends in my house MATRIX in DVD on a G4@400 pci on a 17 inch CRT and a pair of yamaha NS10.Almost a home cinema...  Obviously was MacOs9.
And the graphic card a rage 128 pro pci.

Can we mount with toast DVD images to play with Apple DVD Player?

What is the OS9 BEST video player? I understand that divx and 3ivx are only decoders, not players. Am I wrong?

[IIO]

Not even ata-33 speeds.  So, 33 Mb/s is out of reach.

yea, with a 33 disk controller it is even difficult to play uncompressed TV formats.

Can we mount with toast DVD images to play with Apple DVD Player?

dont know by heart. but i think it would be slow. thats only an option in OSX.

What is the OS9 BEST video player? I understand that divx and 3ivx are only decoders, not players. Am I wrong?

i always came back to quicktime player when i wanted to watch something in fullscreen mode. all other players out there seem to do nothing else what apples player also does (when it comes to the way they read files, decode and play them, technically, that is.)
i wish there would be something "faster", or a player which let you import files from disk while scaling their size down.

if i was to make movies for that imac, i would create half-sized mpeg as .mov format. you might end up with a file small enough to play it from RAM ...

[supernova777]

I remember back in 2001 I saw with some friends in my house MATRIX in DVD on a G4@400 pci on a 17 inch CRT and a pair of yamaha NS10.Almost a home cinema...  Obviously was MacOs9.
And the graphic card a rage 128 pro pci.

i have a similar story but with downloading the episode one phantom menace.. it was the first movie i ever downloaded (i think it was VCD video cd format, i have no idea what the codec was) it took me like 3-4 days to download this at a very low speed on my modem lol i think downloading at like 30kb/s speed LOL  but yeah i remember the computer was barely good enough to play this movie back..
this was sometime in fall of 1999.

i think i remember trying to play it on my performa 6400.. but it wouldnt work so i had to play it on my pentium 3 (Which was a supermicro P6SBA motherboard) i remember being so proud of this supermicro brand and that my pc wasnt made in taiwan but "made in usa" lol it was based on intel 440bx chipset

i dont even remember what i did with this board i think i literally gave it to the guy at the computer store when i bought my p4 upgrade to it.. i wish i had kept it! 3 X ISA slots! these boards are rare now.. im 100% sure i had the matrox g450 card on this machine! dual head VGA and i remember i loved this video card very much at the time
ok it wasnt the 450 because the 450 wasnt out yet.. it was the g400..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_G400
the url here should have some info about what codecs the g400 supported...


here it is.. and it was canadian! so i was super proud my computer was American + Canadian! lol
it was super brand new at the time... i think i had just bought it!! literally because this wikipedia article says september 1999. and it must have been october or so..
i used this board for a long time, even tho i used g3 b&w's + graphite g4's at my work/design studios i didnt have one of my own untill maybe even 2003.
my next board after that p6sba was the asus cusl2 (mid-2000) another p3 http://www.ixbt.com/mainboard/images/roundup-jun2k1/asus-cusl2-c.jpg
i wanted to have a g4 450mhz because this machine was the dream machine of the time (early 2001) before the digital audios + quicksilvers showed up!

even still i have fond memories of this performa 6400

unfortunately i had no good software for it at the time.. only graphic design photoshop/illustrator stuff
i was mainly into collecting fonts/typefaces back then + doing graphic design. web design.. flash animations was really inspired by this guy hilman curtis (RIP) hes died recently.. from cancer.. 

but anyway yea this performas disk speed reading from the must have been ata-33? this machine is from back in 1996...
pretty sure it wasnt SCSI

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_performa/specs/mac_performa_6400_180.html
listes 1.6gb hard drive - i keep trying to remember what size hd i had around this time.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hard_disk_drives this page is not helpful at all
it skips from 1999 to 2002 !!! lol and has really bad info

im pretty sure aroudn this time we were using 10-20gb-40gb hard drives...  10-20gb for sure.. 40gb. maybe..
"Quantum fireball" times - who remembers? lol
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/9907/990719ataroundup1999.html
heres an article on summer 1999 drives!
ok wow they are mostly under 10gb!!
ok so 15-20gb drives at this time was higher end;) lol

back then i also remember my first experiences with linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware 3.3 or 3.4 was the first version i ever tried to install
and it took me like over a week to learn how to compile a kernel + install it properly

anyways enuff memories;) i highjack the thread:P

[Protools5LEGuy]

I Love to eat Bread when i work with my Mac.

 

What codecs do you use with Bread? 

Sorry for the offtopic Matrix DVD chat, but maybe using Rewritable DVD with DVD video format on iMacs @ 400 should be considered as the best solution. Rendering a DVD on a Intel Mac with toast would be a breeze.

[Protools5LEGuy]

btw im allergic to bread + wheat
if i eat this it destroys my stomach ability to absorb nutrients

Sorry to hear that. I enjoy eating bread daily. 

Offtopic: I have a proMAX http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/graphics/promax_dh_max/Promax_DH-Max_dual_output.html but I am moving to HDMI monitors and VGA is not in my setup at this time.

Back to topic. Are there more players than quicktime to enjoy the 3ivx codecs?

Do any of you have working http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/seagull-video-player ? Seagull seem the only "VLC" on OS9. Perhaps a member can make ResEdit Magic with the serial thing. The authors http://macintoshgarden.org/author/trinfinity-software  software for iTunes worth mentioning.
Offtopic:VLC first PowerPC version was 0.7.0 for Puma. http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/0.7.0/macosx/vlc-0.7.0.dmg
The source code is available. Do anyone know if Codewarrior can "adapt" that source code to work on OS9? I guess it was based on quartz composer on OSX, but maybe our gurus know the way to adapt that to the graphics composer on OS9...Whishful thinking.


Any other videoplayer on OS9? Do windows media player benefit from the 3ivx drivers?

What about http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/ac-3-codec-mac-os-9 ?

[Protools5LEGuy]

And the video card help on video decoding may be hard to measure, despite DVD playback that use a different mechanism.

Let us decript the secrecy of DVD playback
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Video_CD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_CD

Mpeg1-2 rules!

We could discuss the quality of them.

Video CD
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_CD#Video MPEG 1 352x288PAL res bitrate : 1,150 kilobits per second constant bitrate       Audio  MPEG-1 Audio Layer II  224 kilobits per second constant bitrate

SuperVideoCD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_CD#Video MPEG-2  Resolution:  NTSC: 480x480 PAL/SECAM: 480x576
    Frame NTSC: 29.97 frames per second PAL/SECAM: 25 frames per second
    Bit rate: Up to 2.6 megabits per second Constant or variable bit rate

Because of its 480x480 resolution, SVCD picture quality is more than double that of VCD. On the downside, this increase in picture resolution sacrifices video length capacity by over 50%. Because of this, titles released on SVCD has to come in twice the number of discs of their VCD equivalents.[1]


The combined audio and video bit rates should not exceed 2.7 Mbps. This data rate was chosen, in part, to ensure compatibility with slower and less expensive "2 × speed" CD drives.
AudioCodec: MPEG-1 Audio Layer II   Output: Monaural, dual channel, stereo, and multichannel support up to 5.1 output.
    Bit rate: from 32 to 384 kilobits per second, inclusive    Constant or Variable bit rate

SVCDs may have two separate stereo, or four mono audio tracks (for commentary or additional languages).

Audio may have up to 6 channels (in a 5.1 arrangement) using the MPEG Multichannel surround sound format, although space constraints and inconsistent hardware support make it impractical, and very uncommon.

Variable bit rate encoding, while not supported by the MPEG-1 Audio Layer II standard, is part of the SVCD specification. However, variable bit rate audio is not consistently supported by standalone players, and thus the format is rarely used.

DVD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video#Video_data
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video#Audio_data
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video#Data_rate

Aiming to improve picture quality over standard editions, Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment offered "Superbit" – a premium line of DVD-Video titles having average bitrates closer to 6 Mbit/s. Audio quality was also improved by the mandatory inclusion of both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround audio tracks. Multiple languages, angles, and extra audio tracks were eliminated to free up more space for the main title and thereby to ensure the highest data rate possible. In January 2007 the Superbit line was discontinued.

So a bitrate of 6 Mbit/s should give stunning DVD quality. And that bit rate can come even from the CD from the slowest iMac400
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_dv_400.html  that has     24X CD-ROM. A movie in 2-3 rewritable cds.

[Protools5LEGuy]

So a bitrate of 6 Mbit/s should give stunning DVD quality. And that bit rate can come even from the CD from the slowest iMac400
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_dv_400.html  that has     24X CD-ROM. A movie in 2-3 rewritable cds.

Dawm I was wrong. Based on http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/CD-ROM+drives a 12xcdrom gives  1.8Megabytes/sec. To make "SuperVideoCD" with "Superbit" quality you need  an 40xCDROM.

DVD-Video discs have a raw bitrate of 11.08 Mbit/s, with a 1.0 Mbit/s overhead, leaving a payload bitrate of 10.08 Mbit/s. Of this, up to 3.36 Mbit/s can be used for subtitles, a maximum of 10.08 Mbit/s can be split amongst audio and video, and a maximum of 9.80 Mbit/s can be used for video alone. In the case of multiple angles the data is stored interleaved, and so there's a bitrate penalty leading to a max bitrate of 8 Mbit/s per angle to compensate for additional seek time. This limit is not cumulative, so each additional angle can still have up to 8 Mbit/s of bitrate available.

Professionally encoded videos average a bitrate of 4-5 Mbit/s with a maximum of 7–8 Mbit/s in high-action scenes. This is typically done to allow greater compatibility among players, and to help prevent buffer underruns in the case of dirty or scratched discs.

CD-ROM CD-ROMX Rating Data Transfer Rate

 1x 150 Kilobytes/sec
 2x 300 Kilobytes/sec
 4x 600 Kilobytes/sec

 8x 1.2 Megabytes/sec
 10x 1.5 Megabytes/sec
 12x 1.8 Megabytes/sec
 20x 3.0 Megabytes/sec
 36x 5.4 Megabytes/sec
 40x 6.0 Megabytes/sec
 48x 7.2 Megabytes/sec
 50x 7.5 Megabytes/sec
 52x 7.8 Megabytes/sec

[Protools5LEGuy]

From wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Cut_Pro

In April 2004, version 4.5 of Final Cut Pro was introduced and branded by Apple as "Final Cut Pro HD" due to its native support for Panasonic's tape-based DVCPRO HD format for compressed 720p and 1080i HD over FireWire. (The software had been capable of uncompressed HD editing since version 3.0, but at the time had required expensive video cards and high speed storage.)

So FCP3 could make HD

[Graveyard]

Hehehe, that's the thingy i forgot about. I can use a converting program to make my buddy some movies in video cd format. We needed a few months to come up with this, but it was worth it. Truth be told, i had totally forgotten about video cd. More than that, i can give him my firewire dvd-rw and i can fit at least 3-4 movies on a dvd using the vcd format. I had a few of those back in the day.

[Protools5LEGuy]

Truth be told, i had totally forgotten about video cd. More than that, i can give him my firewire dvd-rw and i can fit at least 3-4 movies on a dvd using the vcd format. I had a few of those back in the day.

If you give him a firewire DVD, you could use VideoCD/SupervideoCD/DVD to exchange movies, but I would use plain DVD video format, because the quality is far superior to VideoCD in resolution/framerate/digital noise. Had you tested a comercial DVD on the iMac? Apple DVD Player http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/apple-dvd-player . It seems that is only compatible with AGP PowerPCs (?)

I thought the Apple DVD player were only instaled on DVD equiped Macs. Either way THAT should be the best solution for a G3@400 with ATI Rage 128 Pro in OS9. In case you go OSX or Debian...http://powerpcliberation.blogspot.ca/2012/08/video-on-powerpc-part-2-playback-on-g3.html