Newer codecs on OS 9?

[Christopher]

Hey, my youth leader wants to use my dualie G4 450(I don't have a use for it anymore) and connect it to a 1080p tv panel and play movies of the trips the youth ministry has gone and as well as show a PowerPoint of upcoming stuff. But I want to keep it in OS 9 for speed reasons.

My question is, as long as I keep the formats of the videos in either DV or MOV, OS 9 should be ok right? But in the event i get the movies in a different format other then the two I mentioned, could I get a third party video player to play such files? If not I guess I could just use 4Media converter to switch them, but still, I'd rather not have to do that.

The G4 is dual 450MHz with 1GB I think of memory and a 20GB 5400rpm hard drive, it runs 9.2.2.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Hey, my youth leader wants to use my dualie G4 450(I don't have a use for it anymore) and connect it to a 1080p tv panel and play movies of the trips the youth ministry has gone and as well as show a PowerPoint of upcoming stuff. But I want to keep it in OS 9 for speed reasons.
My question is, as long as I keep the formats of the videos in either DV or MOV, OS 9 should be ok right? But in the event i get the movies in a different format other then the two I mentioned, could I get a third party video player to play such files? If not I guess I could just use 4Media converter to switch them, but still, I'd rather not have to do that.

The G4 is dual 450MHz with 1GB I think of memory and a 20GB 5400rpm hard drive, it runs 9.2.2.

Dual 450's and 1 GB of RAM should run Tiger just fine.

 

[Osgeld]

or scream with a lightweight linux

as far as the original question, I am not aware of many 3rd party video players on classic, let alone ones with new codecs

 

[Christopher]

Dual 450's and 1 GB of RAM should run Tiger just fine.

Not quite actually, unless mine is in low power mode...

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Hey, my youth leader wants to use my dualie G4 450(I don't have a use for it anymore) and connect it to a 1080p tv panel and play movies of the trips the youth ministry has gone and as well as show a PowerPoint of upcoming stuff. But I want to keep it in OS 9 for speed reasons.
My question is, as long as I keep the formats of the videos in either DV or MOV, OS 9 should be ok right? But in the event i get the movies in a different format other then the two I mentioned, could I get a third party video player to play such files? If not I guess I could just use 4Media converter to switch them, but still, I'd rather not have to do that.

The G4 is dual 450MHz with 1GB I think of memory and a 20GB 5400rpm hard drive, it runs 9.2.2.

It should be fine, although make sure that H.264 doesn't sneak in those .movs.

 

[avw]

But in the event i get the movies in a different format other then the two I mentioned, could I get a third party video player to play such files?

Uff, that´s a very wide area, ...

There are DivX, Xvid or the Apple MPG4 decoders. Also you should get Sorenson, the Apple MPG2, Flash 7, AAC, OGG, etc. etc. (at least 20 more codecs)

Problems occure with VBR encoded audio or some .avi container files, and all h.xxx files and novadays with this HD-crap.

Quick Time 6.02 pro could be of interrest, vcd, Divxdoctor or Win.Mediaplayer 7, ...

 

[Mike Richardson]

All but the newest codecs are available on OS 9. Here's what you definitely can't play:

- H.264

- VC-1

- WMV 9 or later

Thanks to QuickTime 6, you do have access to AAC audio, as well as regular MPEG-4 video.

The DivX people have made it very hard to download DivX for OS 9 but I managed to find it for my 1.6 GHz G4 rig. I'll upload it if anyone needs it.

1080p is simply not possible on a Dual 450 G4 though. Probably the best you are going to do is widescreen 480p - and that's if your decoder is using both cores.

 

[Mike Richardson]

I decided to fire up my OS 9 box. It's a 1.7 GHz G4.

Right now I'm playing a 192 kbps radio stream in iTunes, using Classilla, and uploading DivX for OS 9 with Fetch.

Here it is: http://www.mikerichardson.name/tidbits/DivX511Installer.sit

 

[CJ_Miller]

A 450 MHz processor is never going to decode 1080p. I know this. My 500 MHz G4 upgrade can play 720i in some formats, but with occaisional drops. It also depends what player you use and what video card. OS 9 has funny limitations on playing back various file and container types. AVI *can* work, but many (most?) files will be problematic with mp3 audio. It's crazy how you can play an mp3 audio file in Quicktime 6, but not an mp3 audio track to an AVI movie!

Here are your best bets for OS 9 video:

If you can re-code the media files yourself to make sure they play, AVI might be ok. Maybe demux and transcode the audio to .aifc or something else Quicktime likes.

If you don't mind huge file size, encode uncompressed. Motion JPEG video and AIFF audio to a .mov file. It will be huge - perhaps gigabytes - but QT will play it without a hitch and since your CPU won't need to decompress anything you will get the largest possible playback size. Limited only by the throughput of your bus and video card. This could yield 720p or better on your CPU, but YMMV. If you need a compressed .mov lossy MPEG1, Cinepac, or Sorenson will play nicely, but don't count on large screen sizes.

 

[JWG Design]

For playback of your own video footage on a nice display, you will want something other than regular DV. DV would work fine if you were playing it through a MiniDV Camcorder to a TV, but the DV format defaults to low-quality for Quicktime playback. Encode it with Apple's MPEG-4, or 3ivx, or Sorenson 2/3.

Tiger should be quite usable on any Dual G4, especially with 1GB RAM. Having a supported video card is a definite usability concern. If you have an ATi Rage128 or better (B&W G3s & newer), that should be fine.

Apple's Quicktime 6 is great for OS 9. You can also add in the 3ivx codec for playback of DivX and XviD content. For AVI videos common on the internet, you'll also want the DivX Doctor to fix the MP3 audio track.

For reference, my Powerbook G3/500 plays 360p/24fps XviD content fine (primetime television), but has trouble with 30fps (sports).

-John

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I guess "somebody" needs to port ffmpeg to Mac OS 9 at some point. (It should be doable, just not pretty.)

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I guess "somebody" needs to port ffmpeg to Mac OS 9 at some point. (It should be doable, just not pretty.)

Yes, that would be a perfect job for that incredibly talented programming team behind Classilla, don't you think?

 

[MidnightCommando]

Yes, that would be a perfect job for that incredibly talented programming team behind Classilla, don't you think?

Actually, using ffmpeg's libavformat and linking it with Classilla could do some very interesting things... for a start, HTML 5 has ogg format as its native embeddable media format, and IIRC ffmpeg can decode Theora and Vorbis using libavformat

You know, if they got on that they might actually beat Firefox/Seamonkey to the punch! Oh man that would be a victory for 68k Macs everywhere - "Our dedicated geeks beat your pansy programmers at supporting the very latest web specs!" :cc:

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I was thinking starting a little smaller with a standalone converter app. I have somewhat more fundamental problems with Classilla than trying to get working.

Seriously, though, a simple converter app to spit out an OS 9-capable QuickTime movie from an arbitrary video file sounds like a reasonable first draft.

 

[Tron]

Porting FFmpeg to Classic will be the second best idea of the decade, after making Classilla (the #1 !!).

Somebody, long time a go, maked a little attempt ...

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qt-ffmpeg/

Sorry for my bad english

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Nice find, Tron! It's primitive, but that's probably the way to go for the first attempt. (glancing at the source, which is in the .sit)

Seriously, somebody work on this before I get tempted and delay Classilla 9.2 to go hack on it. You really don't want that.