question about Quicktime and Windows Media Player

[PBG4]

i just switch from PC to mac about 2 months ago.
1 thing i notice is that the graphic quality on the mac is very bad compare to the old DELL i used to have...
i have no clue why, i thought MAC should be very good on grapics. but when i view the video on quicktime or windows media player on my mac. everything seems to be crappy and not smooth.
what could it be?
bad video card?
need to renew codec?
need more RAM?

My comp is Powerbook G4 1.67GHz, 512 MB, ATI Mobility Radeon9700, 128MB VRAM
Quicktime Version 7.0.1
Windows Media Player 9.0.0

thanks a lot in advance!

 

[mad jew]

What sort of videos? Have you tried using VLC? It might play them a little smoother.

 

[MisterMe]

i just switch from PC to mac about 2 months ago.
1 thing i notice is that the graphic quality on the mac is very bad compare to the old DELL i used to have...
i have no clue why, i thought MAC should be very good on grapics. but when i view the video on quicktime or windows media player on my mac. everything seems to be crappy and not smooth.
what could it be?
bad video card?
need to renew codec?
need more RAM?

My comp is Powerbook G4 1.67GHz, 512 MB, ATI Mobility Radeon9700, 128MB VRAM
Quicktime Version 7.0.1
Windows Media Player 9.0.0

thanks a lot in advance!

What do you mean by graphic quality? Based on your computer's specifications, I don't see a problem. I find Dell displays to be somewhat blurry which tends to obscure flaws in the source material. The crispness of a Mac display reveals these flaws, especially when viewed fullscreen.

 

[Makosuke]

From what you list, you should have enough RAM and processor power to handle any reasonable video (the HD trailers at apple.com are the only exception), so I'm not sure why you'd be noticing such a difference, but it would help to know what kind of files you've noticed the problems with.

If the problems are exclusively with .wmv files, then that's an unfortunate fact of life on the Mac--Windows Media Player is an absolute abomination of a piece of software, and despite being a video player it just doesn't play video very well--its scaling algorithms are ugly, it drops frames for no good reason, and is really horrible with video streams--has a tendancy to just stall mid-video for no reason.

Any .avi or .mov should play just fine in QT player, though--particularly under Tiger, video looks quite attractive for the most part. VLC is a good alternative for AVI files, and may produce more attractive video depending on the source. MPlayerOSX uses yet another filter algorithm even though the interface is uglier, so it might be worth a try as well.

One other possibility is gamma issues; Windows has significantly darker default gamma settings than the Mac, and I've noticed a few cases where the brighter image on the mac brings out flaws in the shadows that the darker image on Windows hides. Just a thought.

 

[PBG4]

thanks for the reply, i think the windows media player does seems crappier than quick time. wondering if purchasing quicktime pro will enhance the qualiity?

my quicktime automatcally pick .mov, .avi, and . mpg, .mpeg the quality of thos are OKAY
and the windows media player chooses .wmv, .asf files and thos quality are pretty bad...
any tip on what kinda file uese QT or WMP???!
thanks again

 

[Veldek]

thanks for the reply, i think the windows media player does seems crappier than quick time. wondering if purchasing quicktime pro will enhance the qualiity?

my quicktime automatcally pick .mov, .avi, and . mpg, .mpeg the quality of thos are OKAY
and the windows media player chooses .wmv, .asf files and thos quality are pretty bad...
any tip on what kinda file uese QT or WMP???!
thanks again

QT Pro won't enhance the quality of the videos. It just enables more functions. You list of filetypes was quite accurate already. I try to avoid Windows Media files as much as I can as they're really bad, especially on a Mac.

 

[Peterkro]

Flip4mac will enable Quicktime Player to play most wmv files I'm not sure if it improves quality or not as most wmv files I see are crap quality to start with.