[VaBeachBambie]

Hello, I'm a newbie to the forums.

I have an aluminum Powerbook G4. My specs are 1.5GHz processor, 1GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.5.2. My problem is that I cannot play H.264 videos (avi, mpeg, and mkv formats). To be more exact, they open but play EXTREMELY choppy -- play one frame, wait 5 seconds, play another frame, and so on. But, there have been maybe 2 times where I randomly tried playing a H.264 file that never used to play, and all of a sudden it played fine -- and the next time I tried it wouldn't again. I've been doing a lot of research on the internet and still haven't found an answer to my problem. Is it my computer or is it a software issue? I'm using VLC player which everyone says should play H.264, and Quicktime won't play them either. I couldn't play these files back when i was on Panther either (I upgraded straight to Leopard and skipped Tiger).

Does anyone have any ideas? Its a very annoying problem because a lot of the files I try to download nowadays are encoded with the H.264 codec and I can't watch them.

Even my mom's old Pentium 4 PC with half my RAM plays H.264. >_> sigh. However, her processor is 2.0GHz.

[Heyoka_Happiness]

From what I understand the Powerbook can handle HD, just not THAT codec very well. It has to do with the compression, and the type of processing required to decode the data stream, it could very well be a bandwidth issue. To properly encode/decode it takes a whopper of a CPU.

Someone else might have an work around for you.

Here's what Apple says:
Recommended Hardware Configurations for H.264 High-Definition (HD) Playback
To play high-definition video, a large amount of data must be processed by your computer. A powerful system will deliver the best playback experience.

For 852x480 (480p) video at 24 frames per second:
(Windows)
2.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or faster processor
At least 512MB of RAM
64MB or greater video card
Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista

For 1280x720 (720p) video at 24-30 frames per second:
(Macintosh)
1.8 GHz PowerMac G5 or 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo or faster Macintosh computer
At least 256MB of RAM
64 MB or greater video card
(Windows)
2.8 GHz Pentium 4 or faster processor
At least 512MB of RAM
64MB or greater video card
Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista

For 1920x1080 (1080p) video at 24 frames per second:
(Macintosh)
Dual 2.0 GHz PowerMac G5 or 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo or faster Macintosh computer
At least 512MB of RAM
128MB or greater video card
(Windows)
3.0 Ghz Intel Pentium D (dual-core) or faster processor
At least 1GB of RAM
64MB or greater video card
Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista

Copied and pasted from here http://www.apple.com...ayer/specs.html

[macosxleopard]

Visit perian.org and download Perian. Open System Preferences, click Perian and make sure it says "Perian is Installed" under Installation. If not, click Install Perian.

[VaBeachBambie]

Perian didn't work. :(

[VaBeachBambie]

Thank you for the helpful information. This pretty much verifies my suspicions that my processor is not fast enough to handle H.264. :( Since it is only 1.5GHz G4. But if anyone else has any input, or perhaps a workaround, it would be appreciated.

I've converted H.264 avi/mpg videos to mp4 before so I could play them, but now the files I'm trying to watch are MKV format (dual audio, with or without subtitles), so I can't convert them with iSquint. Is there a good program that will either let me re-encode them with a different codec (so they'll still be MKV, but without H.264) or convert MKV to another format altogether? The former would be better because I'd like to keep the dual audio; if I convert to avi I would have to choose 1 audio track, correct?

[Peter Cohen]

VLC can play MKV files.

[Heyoka_Happiness]

The Perian plug should of worked to play MKV files in quicktime.

Get VLC to play .MKV that was already suggested by Peter.

[VaBeachBambie]

"I'm using VLC player which everyone says should play H.264, and Quicktime won't play them either."

That's from my original post. I'm aware that VLC plays MKV files, I've been using VLC for years now. MKV format is not the problem, the H.264 codec is my problem. I can play MKVs that aren't encoded with H.264 just fine in VLC.

Yes, the Perian plug did allow me to play MKVs in Quicktime...but once again, only MKVs that aren't encoded with H.264. I still couldn't play H.264 encoded MKVs. That's why I'm trying to find a work around program that will basically allow me to re-encode the MKV file without the H.264 codec. I found a program called MoKgVm2DVD that will let me convert it to avi, and this seems to work and I can watch the file, but then I lose dual audio because I can only pick one audio track to encode. This is probably the best I'm going to get...but it would be nice if someone knows of a program that will let me convert a H.264 MKV file to a, for example, Xvid MKV file, so that I can keep the dual audio tracks and be able to watch it on my Mac.

[Heyoka_Happiness]

I haven't used this just because I don't work with .MKV files but you can see if it'll work for you.

http://www.dvd-ipod.biz/mac/mkvconverterfor_mac.html

[junnia]

Hello, I have the same problem as you i have a 1.33GHz PPC G4 with 1.25 GB RAM and Mac OS X 10.5.2.


The funny thing is as you comment that sometimes the files play ok (actually was once, and I'd no other aplication running exept vlc, and the file was playing smoothly, so i thought they would always play ok if every thing else was shut down, but it's not the case, now they justwont play). Actually it's not all h264 encoded videos, but those with i high frame rate.

What is really weird is that we managed sometime to play them smoothly, but it's was just random.

HOpe to get some help.



BTW as you say you can re-encode them, although it's just time taking. but here is one app that will do the job ffmpegx.com/