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video playing slow with upgrade

Submitted by westieg3 on June 22, 2006 - 6:56pm. Development & Software Hacks

i've been trying to get my powerbook wallstreet 250 to play avi movies smoothly for the past year and have always had issues with the video pausing and skipping of me wiht the sound playing normally. right now, i have an extra 64mb ram card in to see how the machine will perform, and performance has improved, but the video is playing the same way. what could be causing the video to play like this right now? virtual memory is off, only the divx codec is in use (and it's all thats needed for this movie), and the machine is set to run at full speed while plugged in. the only reason i can think of for it to be playing so slowly is limited video ram, but i don't see how that could be it due to the fact that this machine is designed to play full-screen dvd movies. maybe the hard drive speed?

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coius's picture

250 is waaayyy too low

Submitted by coius on June 22, 2006 - 11:32pm.

i can barely get my 375MHz Beige AIO to play them. There is going to be NO way you can do it at that speed. Period.

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coius's picture

on a side note:

Submitted by coius on June 22, 2006 - 11:35pm.

my friend just informed me that his 500MHz iBook G3 barely plays them
And the DVD Playback on those are done thru hardware, not the CPU. I think the machine needs to be at LEAST 600MHz (or 450MHz G4) to play them smoothely.

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dankephoto's picture

pokey CPU

Submitted by dankephoto on June 23, 2006 - 2:10am.

Your CPU is too slow for the video clips you're playing. You could re-encode them with a lighter-weight codec . . .

Otherwise, your only real hope is a faster processor.

dan k

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westieg3's picture

the wallstreet is only the ba

Submitted by westieg3 on June 23, 2006 - 3:14am.

the wallstreet is only the backup, and my only computer with s video at that. i'm not interested in buying a 500mhz processor either. a new hard drive and permenant install of that ram is in the computer's future, so that may help, but what lighter codecs are there? i worked my movie down from avi to mov and it delays in the exact same ways. it takes up most of the screen which is probably an issue since i also have a much lower resolution avi that plays fine. i'm still tempted to suspect the vram since itunes plays graphics slow too.

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coius's picture

you are asking more than it is going to give

Submitted by coius on June 23, 2006 - 4:38am.

you are trying to get something out of a computer that is almost ten years old that the computer can't give. Face it, it's too slow, it's not the VRAM, as your display would not be working if the VRAM was a problem. The answer is simple:

Get a new computer!

If you want to play them, you need a waaayy faster computer than you have. I doubt even a CPU Upgrade will have an effect with the system bus that it has on it.

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madmax_2069's picture

i never had that much of a pr

Submitted by madmax_2069 on June 23, 2006 - 7:09am.

i never had that much of a problem with my beige G3 AIO with the stock 266mhz cpu in it, yea it would play a bit slowly but never hiccup like that. now i have a G3 466mhz cpu and all play's great

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dankephoto's picture

re: what lighter codecs are there?

Submitted by dankephoto on June 23, 2006 - 4:25pm.

cinepak is the usual choice for older Mac CPUs. Of course, file sizes are larger but it should play more smoothly as cinepak isn't nearly as CPU-intensive as more modern codecs. Also, consider downsampling to a smaller rez, as you've noticed, smaller equals smoother as well.

dan k

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westieg3's picture

i'm getting a powerbook g4 so

Submitted by westieg3 on June 23, 2006 - 5:04pm.

i'm getting a powerbook g4 soon, but i'd like to get the wallstreet to play movies since it's still gonna be my spare laptop long after my ibook is gone, and it's a great machine for hooking up to the surround sound. it might be seeing a faster processor at some point, but i know the ram will happen once the dell that it's coming out of finally dies and a new (hopefully faster) hard drive will come when i upgrade the g4 to 80gb. that may not get it to play movies, but at least it will be perfect for if i manage to kill the g4.

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Eudimorphodon's picture

On the other side of the coin...

Submitted by Eudimorphodon on June 23, 2006 - 5:07pm.

I can't help but be wryly amused every time I'm pointed to a Quicktime video encoded in the new H.264 codec Apple's so excited about, and find it brings my 867Mhz Titanium to its knees.

Time marches on, I guess.

--Peace

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Re: On the other side of the coin...

Submitted by TJH on June 23, 2006 - 5:27pm.
Eudimorphodon wrote:
I can't help but be wryly amused every time I'm pointed to a Quicktime video encoded in the new H.264 codec Apple's so excited about, and find it brings my 867Mhz Titanium to its knees.

Same with my 1GHz Titanium.. Too bad really. I love this machine.

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coius's picture

I have had no problem with h.264

Submitted by coius on June 23, 2006 - 6:05pm.

in fact, i love the codec, it's nicer than Divx/3ivx/etc... Anyway, it plays great on even my imac G3 Saphire

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moosemanmoo's picture

I was disappointed that my G4

Submitted by moosemanmoo on June 23, 2006 - 8:08pm.

I was disappointed that my G4 Mac Mini couldn't play 720p HD h.264 video. It's definately an awesome codec, but it's CPU intensive.

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