Which version of Quicktime do you use on your 68k?

[TylerEss]

I usually use QuickTime 2.5 on almost everything, though I've got version 4 on my SE/30 just for the sheer bloody-mindedness of it.

If you're upgrading to a newer than 2.5 version of QuickTime, it's very important to keep a version of MoviePlayer around.

What's the slowest Mac that'll play back 320x240 Cinepak movies at 30fps?

 

[tomlee59]

What's the slowest Mac that'll play back 320x240 Cinepak movies at 30fps?

You'll likely need something '040-ish to handle that. It does depend a bit on things like the actual bitrate, video subsystem details, etc., but an '040 of some kind is a good guess. A fast '030 might be able to keep up, but I've never tried it. IIfx, anyone?

 

[pee-air]

What version of Quicktime would one need to view DivX (avi) media on an LC III? Reason I ask, is that I downloaded Debbie Does Dallas from bit torrent (kidding! Just kidding! I'm trying to watch a DVD rip of 2001: Space Odyssey) and I want to watch it on my LC III. I figure I'll have to convert it to a different format and reduce the quality considerably though.

 

[tomlee59]

Ah, hope springs eternal. Alas, an LCIII can't even play MPEG-1 video, let alone DivX. Heck, an LCIII struggles just to play MPEG *audio*.

Indeed, if it's not in Cinepak (or a similarly simple codec), you won't see it on an LCIII.

You need a spritely G3 to play full framerate Divx, so 68k's are out of the running.

Conversion of a Divx movie into Cinepak is quite possible, by the way (but you'll want a faster mac to do it). I'd be interested in seeing 2001 played back on an LCIII. Sounds like fun.

 

[bigD]

What models will play Cinepak movies at 30fps completely depends on the data rate of the movie. Back in my IIcx days, I've been able to play 320x240 Cinepak movies at 30fps if it's heavily compressed.

 

[tomlee59]

If you do want to try converting that movie into something that might be playable and watchable on an LCIII, here are some rough guidelines:

1) Choose a framesize no larger than 320x240.

2) Choose a max framerate of 10fps.

3) Select a keyframe interval of one per second.

4) Choose nothing higher than "medium" quality.

5) Set target bitrate no higher than 100kbytes/s. Lower is better for playability, but worse for watchability.

You'll also need to convert the audio track. I recommend using IMA 4:1, set to 22kHz, and mono. That will get the audio down to less than 90kbits/s. Use SoundApp for this.

Convert video using MoviePlayer 2.5. A 300MHz G3 will convert into Cinepak at around 1:10 speed, meaning a 2-hour movie will take the better part of a day to convert.

If you are adventurous enough to do this, please post back. I'd love to hear how it works out.

 

[pee-air]

If you do want to try converting that movie into something that might be playable and watchable on an LCIII, here are some rough guidelines:
1) Choose a framesize no larger than 320x240.

2) Choose a max framerate of 10fps.

3) Select a keyframe interval of one per second.

4) Choose nothing higher than "medium" quality.

5) Set target bitrate no higher than 100kbytes/s. Lower is better for playability, but worse for watchability.

You'll also need to convert the audio track. I recommend using IMA 4:1, set to 22kHz, and mono. That will get the audio down to less than 90kbits/s. Use SoundApp for this.

Convert video using MoviePlayer 2.5. A 300MHz G3 will convert into Cinepak at around 1:10 speed, meaning a 2-hour movie will take the better part of a day to convert.

If you are adventurous enough to do this, please post back. I'd love to hear how it works out.

You lost me. Why can't I just use Movieplayer to convert both the video and the sound? Or, an even better question, how do I merge the video and sound together if I separate them and convert each respective part with a separate application?

 

[tomlee59]

AFAIK, MoviePlayer will not transcode from the MP3 in which the audio your Divx file is probably encoded, into IMA. If you find out otherwise, let me know. I would love to be able to do this in one pass.

If you do it in two passes, combining the result is easy. Open the video stream in one MoviePlayer window, and the audio in another. Then select all and copy, say, the audio (treating it just as you would the text in a word processing application; I love the Mac's consistency of idioms). Next, click on the window with the video to make it the active window. Holding down the option key, pull down the edit menu, which will now show an option for "add"; use it. Btw, you may add more than one audio track (very useful for multilingual support).

You then have the option of saving the result as a self-contained movie, or as a "normal" one, in which pointers to the source files constitute the "normal" movie.

 

[pee-air]

If you do it in two passes, combining the result is easy.

Easy, but not necessarily the easiest.

Open the video stream in one MoviePlayer window, and the audio in another. Then select all and copy, say, the audio (treating it just as you would the text in a word processing application; I love the Mac's consistency of idioms). Next, click on the window with the video to make it the active window. Holding down the option key, pull down the edit menu, which will now show an option for "add"; use it.

Sounds like a pain in the arse. Not overly complicated or complex, but involved -- too involved for a lazy man such as myself. Would probably be much easier to use MPlayer on another platform. That would do everything in one pass, would it not?

 

[tomlee59]

Let's put it this way to shorten this conversation: I've outlined the best method known to me. There may be other ways, but they are not known to me. I am not aware of any OS X-based tool that will transcode to Cinepak/IMA in one pass (if at all).

If you find such a tool, please post back. I'm always eager to learn something!

 

[pee-air]

If you find such a tool, please post back. I'm always eager to learn something!

MPlayer

Runs in Linux, Mac OS X (x86 and PPC), Windows, BSD, Etcetera. Don't know how practical it would be to compile and use it for Linux/BSD on a 68k Macintosh though. It runs fine on Linux/BSD on old and new world Powermscs. Runs well in OS X too.

 

[tomlee59]

I assume you actually mean mencoder.

If you consider recompiling, and using, a command-line tool less hassle than the procedure I outlined, then more power to you, man! Command lines and I parted ways long ago.

 

[pee-air]

I assume you actually mean mencoder.
If you consider recompiling, and using, a command-line tool less hassle than the procedure I outlined, then more power to you, man! Command lines and I parted ways long ago.

I guess I stand alone in my fascination with bash. [] ]'>

But there is a gui frontend for mencoder. Go here and take a look. Already compiled for OS X too.

 

[tomlee59]

I've occasionally used ffmpegx, which includes mencoder/mplayer as among its modules. No cinepak support, though.

I don't really watch too many movies in cinepak, so for me, there's no particular need to streamline the process. In any event, there is a certain charm to using a low-end mac to produce content for viewing on a lower-end mac. But if I were to contemplate doing this on a regular basis, I'd definitely take a look at the link you generously provided. In the meantime, I just play Star Wars and Galaxy Quest ad nauseam on the old 550 I have in the corner of my office. It always provokes a two-step response:

1) Wow -- that looks like dog poop!

2) Oh -- that's a 33MHz '030? Wow -- that looks great!



If you do ever put together a "one-click" conversion tool that goes from, say, divx, into cinepak + IMA audio, let me know. That might get me off my brains and convert my copy of 2001 into Cinepak. There's a perverse retro appeal to watching that masterpiece on a computer with distinctly non-HAL abilities.

 

[ianj]

I was running QuickTime 4 on my Quadra 840AV (7.6.1), but I recently re-installed the OS and left it at QuickTime 2.5 for the time being. I have a suspicion the newer QuickTime version was impacting performance (not exactly sure though), so my plan for now is to leave it at 2.5 unless something comes up giving me a good reason to go back up to 4.0.

 

[Bunsen]

Which reminds me to ask: what sort of results can you expect from a machine with an Apple MPEG card or a 660/840AV, and what format(s) can they play?

I mean duh obviously MPEG-1 for the card, but what else? What's available to make use of the DSP on the AVs?

 

[Quadraman]

What is the last version of QT you can use with Mac OS 8.1?

 

[tomlee59]

AFAIK, the MPEG card is used only for decoding MPEG-1. All other formats are handled in software by QT. As a result, you can find a situation where your Mac plays the more complex MPEG1 with grace, but chokes on Cinepak, for example.

The MPEG card is great for allowing stutter-free playback of VCDs. I'd love to figure out a way to shoehorn that into a Color Classic (properly modded with a motherboard that accommodates such a thing, of course), but that's for another day...

As for the most modern version of QT that's 8.1-compatible, that's QT5.x. It'll work with 7.5.5 through 9.2.2.

 

[marmotta]

I use whatever is included with the OS I am using unless the video capture cards need a specific version to work. I think 1.6.2 is the earliest version I have on floppy (original) and I think I use that on my Video Spigot Nubus. Targa 2000 PCI cards need 3.0 or above as an example.

Targa 2000 PCI work with QuickTime 4.1.2? I have a bomb on boot… what’s the latest version work?

 

[Phipli]

Targa 2000 PCI work with QuickTime 4.1.2? I have a bomb on boot… what’s the latest version work?

Afternoon marmotta, this thread is 17 years old, it might be worth starting a new one and asking your question there

 

[s_pupp]

If I recall correctly, I used Quicktime 1.6 in my much missed Quadra 840AV, because that was the latest version compatible with its Video Spigot NuBus card.