PowerMac G3 - choppy video playback

[acedickson]

I'm currently running an old powermac G3 that's fine with everything except video playback.

My question, is it the 300mhz processor, the video card (stock ATI rage), or a combination of both?

Before it's said, I would buy a new computer if I could afford it.

[bousozoku]

I believe that a 400 MHz G3 was the minimum recommended for QuickTime 6, let alone version 7.

Your machine doesn't quite exceed that.

[Eidorian]

Try using VLC for playback instead. Quicktime is terrible on older machines.

[acedickson]

I appreciate all the help. I wasn't sure where the bottleneck was, I'll give VLC a try. Any suitable solution will do for the next couple months until I can afford my MBP...

[BILLMCC]

I have one of the first G5 machines with the single 1.6ghz. Ram upgraded to 2GB. I've tried running HD content in QT and it chokes. Is there anything I can do short of saving for a new intel mac?

[Lord Blackadder]

Performance depends in part on what you're playing. I know, for example, that the Rage 128 cards in G3 Power Macs have a hardware MPEG2 decoder that speeds up DVD playback, but may not be used when just viewing QuickTime mpegs.

Apple's HD trailers use the CPU, and require a beefy one - my 1.4GHz G4 is choppy with 720 res HD trailers on a 1680x1050 screen, but I'm guessing all the Intel Macs handle them OK.

[dmw007]

Apple's HD trailers use the CPU, and require a beefy one - my 1.4GHz G4 is choppy with 720 res HD trailers on a 1680x1050 screen, but I'm guessing all the Intel Macs handle them OK.

Yep, no problems running HD trailers on my MacBook Pro. :)