Thanks for sharing this guide Altemose and eyoungren (sorry my english... Im here for my PPC's & for learn english 
)
Regards
)Regards
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(GUIDE) Leopard Speed Improvements
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Thanks for sharing this guide Altemose and eyoungren (sorry my english... Im here for my PPC's & for learn english
Regards
No problem, hope it is helping you get Leopard running better. I'd also want to recognize Intell for his help on this guide.
Hey guys, I thought I would give this a shot on my newly-acquired iMac G4 (PowerMac 6,1) running 10.5.8, since the animations are indeed sluggish. I opened the correct plist file using Property List Editor, but the Compositor section is completely missing. I compared this file with the file of the same name on my 12" Powerbook G4 running 10.4.11, and the latter has that section and a bunch of other stuff, too. How come the iMac is missing so many entries?
Ok, I got it disabled via Secrets. The animations aren't perfect, but definitely better than with it enabled.
Woohoo!
Woohoo!
My iMac has a GeForce4 MX, so, going by Intell's information, not even close.
(Mine's the 1.0GHz 15" model.)Since this thread is about all matters of speeding up Leopard/PPC, I thought I would contribute something to it (though not exactly news): don't bother watching YouTube videos via the website. Rather, use MacTubes. It can search YouTube by itself, or take URLs from the site. It uses QuickTime to play the videos, which is far better than the dreadful Flash Player 10.1 for PPC. I tested against a random video I found on the front page; in the Flash-based web page, the CPU was pegged at 100% and still struggled on the 144p setting. (Any higher, forget it.) In MacTubes, the same video played perfectly at 360p/480p (it doesn't say which) and the CPU never went above 80%. I tried HD quality, and while it would display, I couldn't get more than 1 frame per second on a 1Ghz G4. Not really surprising, I suppose.
Note that you have to tell MacTubes to use QT, in the Player menu. It seems to use Flash by default. You need QT 7.6.4 or higher, but for some reason, Software Update in Leopard will not find/install anything higher than 7.5.5. The final PPC version, 7.7, can be found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/dl761
My iMac has a GeForce4 MX, so, going by Intell's information, not even close.
Since this thread is about all matters of speeding up Leopard/PPC, I thought I would contribute something to it (though not exactly news): don't bother watching YouTube videos via the website. Rather, use MacTubes. It can search YouTube by itself, or take URLs from the site. It uses QuickTime to play the videos, which is far better than the dreadful Flash Player 10.1 for PPC. I tested against a random video I found on the front page; in the Flash-based web page, the CPU was pegged at 100% and still struggled on the 144p setting. (Any higher, forget it.) In MacTubes, the same video played perfectly at 360p/480p (it doesn't say which) and the CPU never went above 80%. I tried HD quality, and while it would display, I couldn't get more than 1 frame per second on a 1Ghz G4. Not really surprising, I suppose.
Note that you have to tell MacTubes to use QT, in the Player menu. It seems to use Flash by default. You need QT 7.6.4 or higher, but for some reason, Software Update in Leopard will not find/install anything higher than 7.5.5. The final PPC version, 7.7, can be found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/dl761
Building on your advice. Install MacTubes Enabler into TenFourFox and you are able to search YouTube like you normally would but be able to open the videos right in MacTubes.
No no no....
MacTubes sucks in performance I'm stuck at 360p using mactubes but using my prefered method I get 720p flash capability. (1.67 Pb G4) Simply get the addon "youtube" for XBMC 11 ppc and voila!
Now, if you don't mind running a browser that runs flash, then use aurorafox 17 nightly or TFF 17 and enable the addon "download helper" which will retreve any flash video, (vimeo,youtube,movshare,novamov,vidbull, etc) and copy the URL to the clipboard. You can then paste it in VLC (command+n) to watch the videos there (HD possible)... quicktime player sucks performance wise (forget HD on single core ppc's) and so does all the addons which are using it.
If you guys wants to give advice on getting the MOST out of the powerpc's, then by all means give the best advice possible. (sounding like Zen... my bad
)
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I dunno man, the fact that my 1GHz G4 can play 360p video in MacTubes/QT perfectly while Flash struggles on 144p, seems pretty impressive to me.
This seemed intriguing enough to try, so here's what I've managed from it.
First off, you can actually use TenFourFox 24 to do this. TFF 24 supports the YouTube HTML5 player, so everything is functional (on videos that support the player, anyway) - and, as an aside, the HTML5 player is a lot better than Flash, but it still struggled to play 360p. I installed VLC 2.0.10 and browsed to a video, then copied the URL of the 720p H.264 version using Download Helper. VLC recognized the URL and opened a window for it, but nothing would play. At first I thought this might be an issue of bandwidth - the iMac has a weak wifi signal - so I downloaded the entire video and tried to play it then. Stiil not working. It sits at a black screen, but maxing out the CPU and appears to be "playing" as far as the controls are concerned.
After testing the other links that Download Helper gave me, it seems that VLC will play the Flash (360p) and 3GP (144p) versions just fine, streaming, at full framerate. However, the 360p H.264 video won't play, either - sound only. So VLC won't play H.264 videos for me, though it does seem to recognize them as such. (For the heck of it, I tried the 720p video in QT Player, and it worked - but it was, naturally, unusably slow.)
I suppose if I could get 720p working on this machine at a good framerate, I'd do it this way. But in any case, MacTubes allows for searching YouTube without going to the website, which can be sluggish on a G4 - so you find the video much faster. And 360p quality isn't bad if you sit a few feet away from the screen....
I dunno man, the fact that my 1GHz G4 can play 360p video in MacTubes/QT perfectly while Flash struggles on 144p, seems pretty impressive to me.
This seemed intriguing enough to try, so here's what I've managed from it.
First off, you can actually use TenFourFox 24 to do this. TFF 24 supports the YouTube HTML5 player, so everything is functional (on videos that support the player, anyway) - and, as an aside, the HTML5 player is a lot better than Flash, but it still struggled to play 360p. I installed VLC 2.0.10 and browsed to a video, then copied the URL of the 720p H.264 version using Download Helper. VLC recognized the URL and opened a window for it, but nothing would play. At first I thought this might be an issue of bandwidth - the iMac has a weak wifi signal - so I downloaded the entire video and tried to play it then. Stiil not working. It sits at a black screen, but maxing out the CPU and appears to be "playing" as far as the controls are concerned.
After testing the other links that Download Helper gave me, it seems that VLC will play the Flash (360p) and 3GP (144p) versions just fine, streaming, at full framerate. However, the 360p H.264 video won't play, either - sound only. So VLC won't play H.264 videos for me, though it does seem to recognize them as such. (For the heck of it, I tried the 720p video in QT Player, and it worked - but it was, naturally, unusably slow.)
I suppose if I could get 720p working on this machine at a good framerate, I'd do it this way. But in any case, MacTubes allows for searching YouTube without going to the website, which can be sluggish on a G4 - so you find the video much faster. And 360p quality isn't bad if you sit a few feet away from the screen....
There are obviously different ways to handle YouTube on PPCs. Keep the suggestions coming, together, we can make for a better user experience on PowerPC Macs!
I was actually able to test disabling Beam Sync with a CRT monitor today. It's a tiny little 9" monochrome SVGA display that I got for testing machines. There was none of the predicted graphical tearing - everything was fine.
One thing I hadn't tried before was the Grid view for Dock folders. Previously, it took a few seconds to open and the animation was about 5 fps, now it opens really quick and really smooth. This really is one of the things anybody running Leopard needs to do, it makes a huge difference.
One thing I hadn't tried before was the Grid view for Dock folders. Previously, it took a few seconds to open and the animation was about 5 fps, now it opens really quick and really smooth. This really is one of the things anybody running Leopard needs to do, it makes a huge difference.
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The only reason I prescribed against it was that I do not own a CRT to test on and heard bad things about disabling V-Sync (BeamSync) on CRTs like mouse tearing and graphical artifacts. Glad to see you got it working! What system did you use to test and what GPU?
Ah I see. 60 Hz is the regular for LCDs and 85 for CRTs and the higher end ones can go to 105 Hz.
60Hz is the rough equivalent to a CRT's refresh rate for a LCD. But because of how they refresh the pixels the perceived refresh rate is much higher and much more resistant to video tearing.
Just thought I'd add something else here…
Above, I indicated how to completely disable Spotlight. Note that you can either enter those two codes in Terminal or go to the file locations specified and delete the files.
Anyway, disabling Spotlight has the additional effect of killing off the Find option in the Finder. But there is a workaround. For the workaround you'll need Quicksilver and EasyFind.
Quicksilver can be found here.
EasyFind can be found here (click on the link for the older version).
Essentially what we are going to do here is use Quicksilver's (Quicksilver on my Quicksilver, HEY!) trigger function to call EasyFind via a hotkey.
Once you have QS installed and setup the way you want it, bring it up and go to the Triggers area.
Go to the custom triggers section and add a Hotkey trigger.
QS will probably default to an app you already have open. Just drag the EasyFind app on to the Select an Item area. The action should automatically set to be Open. Click Save.
Next is to set the hotkey trigger. Select the trigger and press on the "i" button down on the bottom right. A sheet will pop out allowing you to set various options, including the hotkey. I choose CTRL+F so as to avoid calling the find option in the programs I am in. If you click on the Scope tab you can set which applications this works in or does not. You have to actually type in the name of the app using this tab however. I just left it alone (the default is enabled in all applications) so I can call up EasyFind no matter what program I am in.
If there are any other options you want to set you can do that. I'm just covering the basics here.
Note that EasyFind also searches inside documents so it's a pretty good substitute for Spotlight. You can also set it to close when you close the search window. Also note, that even though I am using QS for this because I want a hotkey, it's not necessary. You can simply open EasyFind manually if you want to and forego using Quicksilver.
Last but not least, if you do this in QS, you may need to quit Quicksilver and then start it again for the trigger to become active.
Above, I indicated how to completely disable Spotlight. Note that you can either enter those two codes in Terminal or go to the file locations specified and delete the files.
Anyway, disabling Spotlight has the additional effect of killing off the Find option in the Finder. But there is a workaround. For the workaround you'll need Quicksilver and EasyFind.
Quicksilver can be found here.
EasyFind can be found here (click on the link for the older version).
Essentially what we are going to do here is use Quicksilver's (Quicksilver on my Quicksilver, HEY!) trigger function to call EasyFind via a hotkey.
Once you have QS installed and setup the way you want it, bring it up and go to the Triggers area.
Go to the custom triggers section and add a Hotkey trigger.
QS will probably default to an app you already have open. Just drag the EasyFind app on to the Select an Item area. The action should automatically set to be Open. Click Save.
Next is to set the hotkey trigger. Select the trigger and press on the "i" button down on the bottom right. A sheet will pop out allowing you to set various options, including the hotkey. I choose CTRL+F so as to avoid calling the find option in the programs I am in. If you click on the Scope tab you can set which applications this works in or does not. You have to actually type in the name of the app using this tab however. I just left it alone (the default is enabled in all applications) so I can call up EasyFind no matter what program I am in.
If there are any other options you want to set you can do that. I'm just covering the basics here.
Note that EasyFind also searches inside documents so it's a pretty good substitute for Spotlight. You can also set it to close when you close the search window. Also note, that even though I am using QS for this because I want a hotkey, it's not necessary. You can simply open EasyFind manually if you want to and forego using Quicksilver.
Last but not least, if you do this in QS, you may need to quit Quicksilver and then start it again for the trigger to become active.