G3 & movies

[Graveyard]

Hey guys. I was wonering if any o you have experience in converting movies to be watched on older machines like the iMac G3 or old iBooks. I am planning to convert some movies for a friend of mine that has one of my old iMacs. He's using both OS9 and Tiger. I am more interested in the OS9 part. What player would you use and how would you convert the files, in which format? I'll be doing the video conversion on my i5 iMac so it doesn't take ages.

[supernova777]

im not sure id want to use a g3 for that!!
i use an ipad first generation for watching vids on my local network.
im stuck using this app called AVplayerHD and it always crashes watching videos over the network
but its cool u can also connect to the ipad via FTP + upload movie files directly onto the ipad..
i STILL cant install VLC on the stupid thing because the new version requires iOS 6+ and im stuck using iOS 5.1.1
(typical apple tactics bullshit to make u buy a new one when u dont need to)


anyway.. maybe someone else has some ideas for u mr graveyard!
i would think any workable solution for video watching on a g3 would be very reliant upon hardware accelleration
and what format you are decoding better not require too much cpu;)

[Graveyard]

I still have some really old discs with movies. I downloaded them ages ago when the G3 was still in its prime. They are all encoded using divx. Maybe i can find out the resolution, bitrate and codec they were made with since all of them play perfectly on the G3.

[supernova777]

I still have some really old discs with movies. I downloaded them ages ago when the G3 was still in its prime. They are all encoded using divx. Maybe i can find out the resolution, bitrate and codec they were made with since all of them play perfectly on the G3.

sure u can do that, but personally, if i had a g3 i wouldnt try to do Multimedia type things with it...
in my mind, g3s = MIDI tracking, sequencing... or doing text programming work.. actual coding..
rock some applescript;) or help us hack some rom firmwares;D
watching movies is for the tired, stoned,drunk+ braindead;) lol
jk i watch movies;P actually i tend to watch full seasons of 90s shows because im nostalgic about the 90s;)
but honestly i bet my ipad decodes movies better then a g3 would.. maybe not if it had a 1ghz zif upgrade
+ A good radeon 9250 video card..
what video card do u have? are u talkin about ibook g3 or desktop g3?

[Graveyard]

I gave this friend one of my G3 iMacs. 400MHz model. He can't afford anything else and i thought that since i had two of them, he could use one. If i could give him a newer one, i would have done so. So he'll have to use it for a while.

[supernova777]

thats called scrapin the bottom of the bucket;) lol
 
i think i was always amazed seeing computers play movies back around that time... late 90s..
it never worked that well from what i remember..
not like vlc works nowadays thats for sure..

[Protools5LEGuy]

Hey guys. I was wonering if any o you have experience in converting movies to be watched on older machines like the iMac G3 or old iBooks. I am planning to convert some movies for a friend of mine that has one of my old iMacs. He's using both OS9 and Tiger. I am more interested in the OS9 part. What player would you use and how would you convert the files, in which format? I'll be doing the video conversion on my i5 iMac so it doesn't take ages.

Read this from the Great Zen http://powerpcliberation.blogspot.ca/2012/08/video-on-powerpc-part-2-playback-on-g3.html

[Graveyard]

Thanks for the link. I had read that article a while ago. It has some useful info though.
I'm really amazed by how much the world has changed around us. Flash has become a resource hog, video codecs likewise... In 2006 i had an almost identical iMac as i described above, on my desk and i could still download torrents and watch a movie on the damn thing. Youtube still worked like a charm. What the hell is happening? I don't see any improvements to the video quality in general when i access youtube. I don't want all that crap in HD all the time. And video codecs... The usual video file you find on the web is still about the size of a cd. ~700 MB. Quality? Still the same i had back in the good old days when i started watching movies on something else besides my tv. If i want better quality, i get myself a 1080p file and that's it. I know you guys are audio professionals, but maybe someone can shed some light on this. Maybe i am just too damn ingnorant to see some hidden facts in all of this...

[Dane D.]

Hey guys. I was wonering if any o you have experience in converting movies to be watched on older machines like the iMac G3 or old iBooks. I am planning to convert some movies for a friend of mine that has one of my old iMacs. He's using both OS9 and Tiger. I am more interested in the OS9 part. What player would you use and how would you convert the files, in which format? I'll be doing the video conversion on my i5 iMac so it doesn't take ages.

In my experience, the G3 is not good at playing movies unless there are low-quality. My solution is to get the movie onto a DVD, than the G3 with a 900MHz - 1.1GHz after market CPU and at least a ATi 9200 card will play back just fine.

For example, I shot HD video, import via iMovie and export at highest quality which I think is 960x540. iMovie at least the version I have, will not export in HD. Than I create a DVD in iDVD and burn to disc. Works great.

[supernova777]

Thanks for the link. I had read that article a while ago. It has some useful info though.
I'm really amazed by how much the world has changed around us. Flash has become a resource hog, video codecs likewise... In 2006 i had an almost identical iMac as i described above, on my desk and i could still download torrents and watch a movie on the damn thing. Youtube still worked like a charm. What the hell is happening? I don't see any improvements to the video quality in general when i access youtube. I don't want all that crap in HD all the time. And video codecs... The usual video file you find on the web is still about the size of a cd. ~700 MB. Quality? Still the same i had back in the good old days when i started watching movies on something else besides my tv. If i want better quality, i get myself a 1080p file and that's it. I know you guys are audio professionals, but maybe someone can shed some light on this. Maybe i am just too damn ingnorant to see some hidden facts in all of this...

its just the codec + encoding that most people + services have moved on to use thats the problem..
some of the "Rips" that u see on torrents and stuff like that.. have been made by 'codec pros' painstakingly testing over and over to get the codecs + options jus right for good playback on lower end systems.. but this is becoming more and more rare now that hardware is getting better and better. people dont care about making the stuff work on lowbie macs because theres a large amt of better macs available at cheap 2nd hand prices... the world has moved on.. so noone cares to make it work. its not that it cant work.. it could. if encoded with the right software with the right options..
but noone will struggle thru figuring it out or doing the wordl to encode it because its easy to have it work non optimized on todays systems..

even back in the time u described. 2005-2006 most thruput on video cards in systems were shit compared to todays pci-express bandwidths. everyone was running AGP video still..
not only that therse been advancedments in compression and better codecs like Mastroska.. MKV
mp4.. what was the standard back in 2006? .wmv .mpeg .flv . mov?

i remember flv was a huge move forward for the internet around 2004-2005
youtube went live on February 14, 2005... i think it was flash player 8
that was the one that made flash video good enough that they could make a site like youtube and before FLV format people were already making video in flash just in basic
.swf files

[supernova777]

this site links to some flash + divx stuff
http://michelterras.perso.sfr.fr/index.html?n=21
http://www.pure-mac.com/downloads/flashplayerclassicdl.html

[Philgood]

Like it is said before. The G3 iMac 400 if it's the firewire one has dvd decoder built into its graphic card but for other video codecs its playback is getting very choppy.
another great blog is
http://ppcluddite.blogspot.com/?m=1
its very linux centric but i got the best results of playing youtube videos with a linux distro called mintppc.
worth a try also it's not that easy to install if you aren't used to linux command computing.

[Graveyard]

I wouldn't install Linux on any of my Macs. It's not worth it and the advantages are next to none.
I have been an active developer in the Linux community for more than 10 years now, so the installation process of a ppc distribution doesn't scare me. It's just that if i wanted a Linux box, I'd have built one from scratch. I have plenty of PC parts to build a couple of them. I have no desire or time to do that.

[Protools5LEGuy]

I wouldn't install Linux on any of my Macs. It's not worth it and the advantages are next to none.
I have been an active developer in the Linux community for more than 10 years now, so the installation process of a ppc distribution doesn't scare me. It's just that if i wanted a Linux box, I'd have built one from scratch. I have plenty of PC parts to build a couple of them. I have no desire or time to do that.

I can not be agree with you. 

It depends of the uses you want for the PowerMac. If you need to browse in internet bank accounts or unknow pages, a debian install is a need. If you just want to browse in MacOS9Lives! and other forums, maybe you can still use any MacOS with the help of Classilla/TenFourFox. For ONLY videoplayback/multimedia/DAW MacOS  is the OS

I beg any user of PowerPC connected to internet take a look on http://powerpcliberation.blogspot.com.es/2014/07/flash-is-really-dead.html written by RatedWin. I try to read weekly on http://powerpcliberation.blogspot.com.es/ http://ppcluddite.blogspot.com.es/ http://happymacs.wordpress.com/ and http://vivapowerpc.tk/ to see how to use safely PowerMacs in 2014...

If you use Classilla/TenFourFox the blog from Kameron Kaiser is a must! http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com.es/


Back to topic, I am also interested in videoplayback with LowEndMacs on OS9.

I have a G3 B&W originally @350 that could play DVD thru the daughter board (decoder card) of my PCI Rage128GL. I have 2 cards and only one daughter card, so I can emulate one decoderless set. I think it gives MPEG2 acceleration but ONLY on OS9 (?)

Let us have a deep look at http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/video

Apple DVD Player 2.7 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/apple-dvd-player
Cornica SensePack for QuickTime http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/cornica-sensepack-quicktimetm
Seagull Video Player http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/seagull-video-player
3ivx for MacOS 9 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/3ivx-macos-9
DivX 3.11 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/divx-311
DivX 4 codec http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/divx-4-codec
DivX v5.0 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/divx-v50
DivX 5.1.1 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/divx-511-divx%C2%AE-codec-mac-os
Xvid for Mac OS 9 v.4.51 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/xvid-mac-os-9-v451
AC-3 Codec for Mac OS 9 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/ac-3-codec-mac-os-9
QuickTime 6.0.3 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/quicktime-603
QuickTime 6.x http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/quicktime-6x
Final Cut Pro 2.0 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/final-cut-pro-20
Windows Media Player 7 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/windows-media-player-7
iMovie 2.1.2 http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/imovie-212-works-sheepshaver

It is a matter of the right CODECs for the CPU you have and the I/O your hard drive/DVD can give. If you use UNCOMPRESSED video, teorically you can play HD on OS9

[Protools5LEGuy]

@Mactron: What app did you used to test the I/O of the harddrives? We need to know the maximum I/O of these systems to find the best CODEC for that bitrate

@Graveyard: iMacs G3s and old iBooks have different harddrives/graphics cards.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/ibook/specs/ibook.html the original ibook have a

2X AGP ATI Rage Mobility graphics with 4 MB of VRAM packed into a sleek handle-equipped "blueberry" or "tangerine" case with a 12.1" TFT active matrix display (800x600 native resolution).

has     EIDE/ATA-2

The original iMac

ATI Rage IIc graphics with 2 MB of VRAM or ATI Rage Pro Turbo graphics with 6 MB of VRAM

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_ab.html has     EIDE (ATA-3)
The iMac can handle

display supports 640x480 at 117 Hz, 800x600 at 95 Hz, and 1024x768 at 75 Hz

Do you want to find a generic codec for a 800x600 res?
I want to find the way to edit HD footage recorded with my Sony Ericson MT-15 XperiaNeo (1280x720 @30fps in H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1) Planar 4:2:0 YUV) on FinalCutPro3 on OS9. 

[Protools5LEGuy]

I gave this friend one of my G3 iMacs. 400MHz model. He can't afford anything else and i thought that since i had two of them, he could use one. If i could give him a newer one, i would have done so. So he'll have to use it for a while.

There are 3 @400 models
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_dv_400.html
ATI Rage 128 VR 2D/3D video with 8 MB of VRAM
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_se_dv_400.html
ATI Rage 128 VR 2D/3D video with 8 MB of VRAM
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_dv_400_indigo.html
ATI Rage 128 Pro (AGP 2X) video with 8 MB of VRAM

[MacTron]

@Mactron: What app did you used to test the I/O of the harddrives? We need to know the maximum I/O of these systems to find the best CODEC for that bitrate

To test the I/O of the hard drives I use QuickBench 1.5.
But forget about Hard Disk throughput, Video card and so on.
800 - 1500 Kbps compressed video, can be played even from a floppy disk! LOL.
And the video card help on video decoding may be hard to measure, despite DVD playback that use a different mechanism.
The most important part is the CPU (to decode video) and the path from CPU,memory and video, that follow the uncompressed video.
So around 500Mhz G3, and 50/66 mhz (or even 100 mhz) memory buses and PCI video cards may be hard to decode video mp4 (or divx/xvid) around to 640*480 24fps.
My first and only advice is to use 3IVX 4.5 to decode mp4 or divx/xvid as is the faster decoder under Os 9. 25%-50% faster than divx 5.1.1 and 100% faster than Apple MP4! (I'm writing from memory...)

I want to find the way to edit HD footage recorded with my Sony Ericson MT-15 XperiaNeo (1280x720 @30fps in H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1) Planar 4:2:0 YUV) on FinalCutPro3 on OS9. 

There isn't h264 or x264 in Mac Os 9. 

[Protools5LEGuy]

I want to find the way to edit HD footage recorded with my Sony Ericson MT-15 XperiaNeo (1280x720 @30fps in H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1) Planar 4:2:0 YUV) on FinalCutPro3 on OS9. 

There isn't h264 or x264 in Mac Os 9. 

I know, but we are talking about convert videofiles on  Intel machines to be "G3" playable. And I talk about converting them on Win/OSX to be editable with FinalCutPro3 on OS9...
http://www.macworld.com/article/1001461/finalcut.html
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00005TRYQ/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Final-Cut-Pro-3-Professional-Video-Editing-Mac-OSX-OS9-Brand-New-/261548533980?pt=US_Image_Video_Audio_Software&hash=item3ce581e8dc
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Final-Cut-Pro-3-w-DVD-Studio-Pro-1-5-M8562Z-A-BUNDLE-/251603091521?pt=US_Web_Desktop_Publishing_Software&hash=item3a94b68041

I want to find what files are final cut "native" or premiere "native" to work on 720p30. I don´t need 1080p still 

https://web.archive.org/web/20021216231820/http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/specs.html

[MacTron]

Mjpeg codec or mp4/divx/xvid with Avid Videoshop v3x or 4x and forget about FCP.
FCP Its painfull slow, even in some of my "High End G4s" (1.5/1.66/.2.0 Ghz!)

[Protools5LEGuy]

To test the I/O of the hard drives I use QuickBench 1.5.

Where?

Mjpeg codec or mp4/divx/xvid with Avid Videoshop v3x or 4x and forget about FCP.
FCP Its painfull slow, even in some of my "High End G4s" (1.5/1.66/.2.0 Ghz!)

Mjpeg codec is alowed in FCP3. I thought a software for G4 500-667 minimum would support 720p at least fluidly on a GHz dual/MDD.

It worth looking http://elvirasweeney.com/oldmac/ for video editing SD on G4s Low End

My question is: What video CODEC is PowerPC/OS9 friendly and aware of the RISC arch.? There should be codecs "easy" for G3 cpus... I know 68020 macs can play 320x200 video at 15 fps. Uncompressed video is too much info to be handle by onboard IDE but the DA/QS/MDD, but with SCSI/IDE66/SATA raids it should be achieved even on G3s.

Firewire can sustain 400Mbts/s and for HD uncompressed is needed less using the DV codec (G4 friendly)

[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 

[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.