Jumpy Video Play back

[stuartm]

Hi
I cant get smooth video play back via all the standards; You Tube, BBC iPlayer etc etc. It staggers pauses and stops whilst further downloading (th little swirling icon). I can get it on my PC laptop with none of the issues above, via same router but not on my desktop mac.

My set up is:
mac G4 1Ghz power PC.
1mb l3 cache
2GB DDR SDRAM
120gb hard Drive plus a 56Gb hard drive
The graphics card is ge Force 4 MX
Vram64mb
The disply is a IIyama 14440 x 900 @ 60Hz, 32bit colour.
Im getting on average a 5Mb connection speed.

I dont know what most of the above means but if anything sticks out as being the problem I would live to get it fixed.

many Thanks in anticipation
Stuart

 

[Sorkvild]

Play one of these videos you mention and have Activity Monitor (in Utilities folder) open at the same time so you can see if anything is maxing out the CPU.

Flash performs pretty poorly on G4s unfortunately... Do you have the latest version of Flash?

 

[stuartm]

Sorkvild
I dont know if I do. How do I check this and where would I download the new flash player? Is it free?

Ive found the COPU usage utility and will check this out, Thanks for your help.
S.

 

[stuartm]

sorkvild
The small graphic on the CPU usage is filled with green and some red. Sorry for sounding a little dim here.
the data is: Green 72% and red 28%
Does that mean its maxing out? and if so is there a fix?

Cheers
Stuart

 

[r.j.s]

Sorkvild
I dont know if I do. How do I check this and where would I download the new flash player? Is it free?

Here ...

 

[OneMike]

you can see your version and download here http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_15507

 

[stuartm]

Thanks all. I upgraded to Flash 10 but still stuttering on most video playback. the CPU usage graphic is showing 80% green (user) and 20% (red (system) when playing back a stuttering online video.

Ive also noticed that when I go into System preferences and look at network, it comes up with a drop down window that says "another application has changed the network settings", I cant close this window and need to force quit. does anyone know if this may be connected to this issue or is this a seperate issue (i.e. a new post).

Thanks
S.

 

[Sorkvild]

When the video is playing look at the list of processes. Make sure it is sorted by the CPU heading, and your internet browser is most likely at the top of the list. If its relatively high during playback, then that is most likely the issue. Unfortunately there is really nothing to do, Adobe has done an exceptionally poor job of creating a decent flash player plugin for OS X...

If you got a newer video card, it's possible you could see a slight improvement, but what really matters most is a fast CPU and a 1Ghz G4 is not exactly as fast as lightning! But in my opinion now it's just not really worth it anymore to spend money on PPC machines.

Flash on Intel macs is much much better.

 

[Parradoxx]

For what its worth,
I'm having the same problem too.

PowerBook G4 17"
1.5 GHz
2 GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB
1440x900 32-bit color
150 GB HDD @ 7200rpm (43GB free)
OS X 10.4.11

Playback pauses every 5-10 seconds for about 1-2 seconds. The pause frequency increases slowly but noticably, the pause duration is pretty consistent. The net pipeline is wide open; its something in the OS that is shaky.

The webbroswer remains the dominant application during playback, but its CPU usage is consistent and nominal (around 20%). Other apps, both user and administrative, but all OS related, take turns in the #2-15 spots for CPU usage, but they pop up to 6% and the rest of the time take 1% or less (typical). Killing as many of these threads as possible (even unwisely) does not improve the playback.