How to watch youtube video at half the current CPU use or less

[zen.state]

I have found what I feel is a great solution for people with slower G4's or people that just want the site to stop hogging all their CPU. I recently discovered a great free app called "Mactubes" and have quickly fallen in love with it. Using this on my G4 1.8GHz I have watched video of all different quality/resolution and the CPU consumption ranges from 17-36%. The even better thing is that you can watch, search and download every video on youtube without ever going to the website. Gives you a great player window also that makes it much more like watching vids in VLC or something.

These results I speak of require one specific setting in the apps preferences..

1. Download Mactubes here. It supports 10.4.2+

2. Launch it then open preferences. Set the player type to Quicktime like the image I have attached shows. The window mentions near the bottom you need Safari 4+ but that is only for the "Video player" mode which uses html5 but without actually launching Safari. QT player setting uses even less CPU.

I have also tried the flash and video player setting and they use more CPU. The quicktime interface takes flash out of the equasion all together which is amazing. Virtually every video on youtube is a lowres h.264 with a flash (.flv) wrapper. The QT setting ignores the wrapper and plays the h.264. Even a G4 400+ can play low res h.264 without the flash crap.

Please share your results if you try this.

 

[76ShovelHead]

Love it

I discovered MacTubes about a year ago and i used it all the time. I don't really watch YouTube ever, but when i want to hear a song or something it's really nice to have a way to do so on my mac. Have you tried &fmt=18? It doesn't seem to work anymore.

 

[zen.state]

fmt=18 is standard def. h.264 and works great for me. Maybe you need to update QT.

 

[macgeek18]

I've been using MacTubes for awhile and it breathed new life into my iMac G4. Which is my itunes/youtube server now.

 

[iMikeT]

Does this work only for YouTube videos or can it be used with other video sources?

 

[iMikeT]

By the way, I hate saying this but it's pathetic how my iPhone can run video better than my G4.

 

[zen.state]

Does this work only for YouTube videos or can it be used with other video sources?

Only works for youtube. Sorry.

 

[zen.state]

By the way, I hate saying this but it's pathetic how my iPhone can run video better than my G4.

The iphone has h.264 decoding hardware in it so it hardly even uses the CPU to play video. That is why it plays so much better. Overall a high end G4 tower would have a lot more capability than an iphone.

Hardware can only be as good as the software it's running after all.

 

[crlsjcb05]

I too have been using Mactubes, and it works better than the in-browser flash player, but I can't seem to get quicktime to work.

"Can not open video. Please open URL with browser."

That's the error that I get when I switch to Quicktime. Any ideas?

 

[MacinDan]

I too have been using Mactubes, and it works better than the in-browser flash player, but I can't seem to get quicktime to work.

"Can not open video. Please open URL with browser."

That's the error that I get when I switch to Quicktime. Any ideas?

You need to upgrade to version 3.0.4. Occasionally Youtube changes something in their urls, I think, and the program's author has to update (which he/she does promptly).

 

[stroked]

Thanks, it works great on my iBook. I can't wait to install it on my friends Powermac digital audio. I have tried upgrading the Flash, and TenFourFox on her mac. I'm hoping this will work even better.