Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iMac G3 wont play video

S

ShadowNano

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 3, 2010
12
0
UK
hey i have an old G3 that wont play video, i know its an old computer but i thought that it probably should be able to, so if anyones got any ideas that would be much appreciated.

spec is

imac G3 500Mhz
1GB ram


Thank you in advance
 
ShadowNano said:
hey i have an old G3 that wont play video, i know its an old computer but i thought that it probably should be able to, so if anyones got any ideas that would be much appreciated.

spec is

imac G3 500Mhz
1GB ram


Thank you in advance
Click to expand...

you should be grateful it still boots :D

A G3 is not "old": it is "ancient"

BTW, what is exactly your problem ? What o.s. are you running ?
 
Max(IT) said:
you should be grateful it still boots :D

A G3 is not "old": it is "ancient"
Click to expand...

it actually runs really well good old apple:apple: making products that last!, especially since i put the 1GB of Ram into it,

im running Latest version of Tiger, 10.4.9 or something like that

it did have Panther on it but that was pretty unusable as that wont even share itunes library with my other Macs running 10.6, however i am very impressed at how well Tiger fits with 10.6:rolleyes:

the problem is that the video does not play smoothly , its extremely jumpy, audio is fine but video jumps around and pauses. ideas?
 
youtube does not work

also iver tried these formats

.mp4
.mov
.avi
.m4v

all the same experience sadly
 
My old G4 iMac has problems with video. Flash is horrible. Remember, video online was rare/lower quality in 1998-2003. The specs of a decade ago didn't take into account the demands of today. You can use your computer for surfing, email, and word processing, but if you want good video, time to buy a new Mac.
 
you could try running video under VLC in a small window and see if that helps but the CPU is your major problem here. Make sure no other apps are running in the background either.
 
vlc comes up with a message saying video frame rate dropping and computer too slow as an explanation
 
ShadowNano said:
vlc comes up with a message saying video frame rate dropping and computer too slow as an explanation
Click to expand...
where is the video stored ??????
i hope you do not even try to connect a external harddrive via usb to it , as the iMac g3 only gas usb 1.1 which is far to slow to to get a video from a external harddrive , if you use a external harddrive then connect it via firewire and that problem is solved
you can even get the video via apple talk if you have connected your iMac via ethernet on your router from your other mac then you will be able to play video ,
of course do not consider hd video playable , hd was not even invented back then

and dont use flashplayer 10 for the g3 , as flashplayer 10 needs at least a g4 processor to even be considered as working at all

its not your iMac thats to slow for youtube, its flashplayer 10 is just badly coded
 
MacHamster68 said:
where is the video stored ??????
i hope you do not even try to connect a external harddrive via usb to it , as the iMac g3 only gas usb 1.1 which is far to slow to to get a video from a external harddrive , if you use a external harddrive then connect it via firewire and that problem is solved
you can even get the video via apple talk if you have connected your iMac via ethernet on your router from your other mac then you will be able to play video ,
of course do not consider hd video playable , hd was not even invented back then

and dont use flashplayer 10 for the g3 , as flashplayer 10 needs at least a g4 processor to even be considered as working at all
Click to expand...

video is just in documents folder i draged it across from my other mac that is giving the G3 internet via an ethernet cable, ill check the flash player but that would only effect internet videos right?
 
yes the flashplayer only effects internet video streams , , what kind of video is it , i mean if its to close to being hd, then dont play it in full screen play it in the vlc window normal avi files should be fine and choose the right aspect ratio , at least i never encountered a problem using apple talk to access a video with my 2 iMac g3's via ethernet and router thats stored on the external harddrive thats connected to my mini g4 or eMac

and i did nothing special, even have less ram then yours (only 768mb and 384mb ) and i have installed tiger and vlc too , so nothing special , apart mine are summer 2001 models which have the 16mb graphic card and 600/700ghz
 
maybe its that your processors are better, im running the vids small but still no luk

vids are not HD or really near that, so im pretty stumped:confused:
 
OP

Disable dashboard.

You only have a 16mb vram video chip in there. This is the bottleneck.

You need to shut down everything in order to play back video.

Upgrade the hard drive to a 16gb cache hard drive, too. that iMac G3 only came with a 2mb cache hard drive. Try to find at least a 8mb cache hard drive. You will be limited to a 128gb hard drive capacity.

You can play back DVDs fine, right? I've watched videos on iMac G3's older than yours.
 
California said:
You can play back DVDs fine, right? I've watched videos on iMac G3's older than yours.
Click to expand...

I have not tried DVD's as no DVD drive but ill will share my MacBook pro's with it and let you know

thanks for the help, i will look at HD's 2 when i get a chance:D
 
It will play some video.

An iMac Rev. C 266MHz with 6Gb VRAM played some video.
 
I used to watch DVDs on my iMac G3 400MHz under 10.4 with no issues. It ought to be able to handle AVIs and MP4s as long as their resolution isn't too high.
 
What happens if you lower the colour depth or resolution in the display preferences? It'll free up some VRAM as California suggests.
 
yes done that, and now have got one video to play, its a really old 15 seconds that i took on a old photo camera,

anyone know how to find out all its setting and the way it was encoded? its an .avi
 
yes lowering the resolution to thousands of colors and disable spotlight unless you cant live without it will free up resources too and disable dashboard
the how to for that you find on google as some terminal work required and i cant remember the commands right now :confused:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back