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Safari YouTube (and more)method for G4 and G5 Macs

WalnutSpice

WalnutSpice

Suspended
Original poster
Jun 21, 2015
456
92
Canton, Oh
I've been doing a lot of work on my G5 recently. Got into web design and programming and it seems to be the best computer I have for it. But in the background I like to play YouTube videos. With all my software running and my crap 64MB GPU combined it means I have to bog YouTube down to around 240p when I'm pushing the system. The best way I've found to get better youtube performance is to enable the Develop menu on Safari and switch to the user agent iOS 7 - iPhone. Using this mode will allow you to run other things better too. Like Instagram and Twitter. Watching YouTube this way the video plays in the mobile HQ resolution and rarely drops frames. This method is really good to use on G4s. Using this not only can I have YouTube on my second display, right next to it I also have Twitter and Instagram running and not taxing my system almost at all.
 
Do you mean WebKit? Because native Safari on Leopard only has iOS 4.3.3 maximum as a user agent.
 
I've been working a lot with mobile device user agents this week to get decent playback on lower systems and found what you've suggested to be the exact opposite. If I play a youtube clip with Flash at 360P in Leopard Webkit, I use 65% CPU with smooth playback - loading an iOS 7 user agent the CPU is 75% and video stutters - both on my 2.1Ghz G5 iMac.
If you're getting better results, I'd love to know how that's working? Have you an example Youtube clip to compare figures on?
 
Last edited:
Dronecatcher said:
I've been working a lot with mobile device user agents this week to get decent playback on lower systems and found what you've suggested to be the exact opposite. If I play a youtube clip with Flash at 360P in Leopard Webkit, I use 65% CPU with smooth playback - loading an iOS 7 user agent the CPU is 75% and video stutters - both on my 2.1Ghz G5 iMac.
If you're getting better results, I'd love to know how that's working? Have you an example Youtube clip to compare figures on?
Click to expand...
It could possibly be the extra CPU giving me the boost on YouTube performance. I also have my processor set to Highest in the energy settings panel
[doublepost=1468013665][/doublepost]
Gamer9430 said:
yeah i just downloaded webkit on my G5 and i only have iOS 4.3.3. Also, did you run any of those scripts that were included with the download?
Click to expand...
I ran all the scripts that downloaded with it
 
WalnutSpice said:
It could possibly be the extra CPU giving me the boost on YouTube performance. I also have my processor set to Highest in the energy settings panel
[doublepost=1468013665][/doublepost]
I ran all the scripts that downloaded with it
Click to expand...
Did it break Software update, installers, or the iTunes store?
 
WalnutSpice said:
It could possibly be the extra CPU giving me the boost on YouTube performance. I also have my processor set to Highest in the energy settings panel
Click to expand...

Are you saying you have a Dual Processor/Core G5 and that's why there's an improvement using an iOS7 user agent? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Personally, I wouldn't advise running the advanced features script - making Safari pretend it's a version 9.1 can slow things down and forces Youtube to use HTML5 which is harder on the CPU than Flash - however, being on Leopard, it's better to install ClickToPlugin anyway.
However, using these parameters from the script are advised:


defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitAcceleratedCompositingEnabled -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitAccelerated2dCanvasEnabled -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitAcceleratedDrawingEnabled -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitCanvasUsesAcceleratedDrawing -bool YES
 
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Gamer9430 said:
Did it break Software update, installers, or the iTunes store?
Click to expand...
No it didn't
[doublepost=1468016194][/doublepost]
Dronecatcher said:
Are you saying you have a Dual Processor/Core G5 and that's why there's an improvement using an iOS7 user agent? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Personally, I wouldn't advise running the advanced features script - making Safari pretend it's a version 9.1 can slow things down and forces Youtube to use HTML5 which is harder on the CPU than Flash - however, being on Leopard, it's better to install ClickToPlugin anyway.
However, using these parameters from the script are advised:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitFullScreenEnabled -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitAcceleratedCompositingEnabled -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitAccelerated2dCanvasEnabled -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitAcceleratedDrawingEnabled -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitCanvasUsesAcceleratedDrawing -bool YES
Click to expand...
I have it forced to 7.1.6. Last version that doesn't force HTML 5.
[doublepost=1468016516][/doublepost]I can upload my Info and Version plist files for you guys to try if anyone wants too
 
WalnutSpice said:
I can upload my Info and Version plist files for you guys to try if anyone wants too
Click to expand...
I think you'll have to because I don't know how you can present Safari as version 7.1.6 and iOS7 at the same time!
Incidentally, on my machine, going from Safari 5.0.6 to a fake 7.1.6 adds over 20% CPU to playing Youtube.
 
Dronecatcher said:
I think you'll have to because I don't know how you can present Safari as version 7.1.6 and iOS7 at the same time!
Incidentally, on my machine, going from Safari 5.0.6 to a fake 7.1.6 adds over 20% CPU to playing Youtube.
Click to expand...
Honestly I couldn't tell you how I got it running the way I did. All I know is I modified the version numbers, installed WebKit for Leopard and ran the scripts. But I'll help as much as I can. Give me a second to grab the files
[doublepost=1468017433][/doublepost]Files:
 

Attachments

  • safari.zip
    3.2 KB · Views: 183
  • webkit.zip
    2.9 KB · Views: 174
Can you supply these:
1) exact specs of your machine.
2) link to a Youtube clip that wont play well normally but does with the new user agent.
3) CPU% that the clip runs at.
 
Dronecatcher said:
Can you supply these:
1) exact specs of your machine.
2) link to a Youtube clip that wont play well normally but does with the new user agent.
3) CPU% that the clip runs at.
Click to expand...
-Dual 1.8GHz G5, 3GB RAM, 500GB WD Blue, 5200 FX 64MB
-No, no video doesn't play normally. It just runs better this way when the system is under load with many programs open
-I'll have to check
 
Adamscomputerrepair said:
How do you guys enable iOS 7 spoofing? I'm so confused
Click to expand...

In Safari, enable the Develop menu in preferences, then go to Develop/User Agent/Other... in the dialogue, replace the text with:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.2 (KHTML like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11D257 Safari/9537.53

That will give you a user agent of iOS7 - when you restart Safari it will default to the normal user agent.
In every test I've done, this user agent makes the CPU have to work harder.
 
Last edited:
Dronecatcher said:
In Safari, enable the Develop menu in preferences, then go to Develop/User Agent/Other... in the dialogue, replace the text with:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.2 (KHTML like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11D257 Safari/9537.53

That will give you a user agent of iOS7 - when you restart Safari it will default to the normal user agent.
In every test I've done, this user agent makes the CPU have to work harder.
Click to expand...


It may make the CPU work harder, but by God in webkit there's no hiccups or anything. I'll be dipped, the kid did it.
 
Dronecatcher said:
Odd...my Powerbook already plays Youtube fine.
Click to expand...


Yeah I have the drill memorized. Open TFF, Go to Youtube, Click a video, Make sure you're HTML5, make sure you have the right extensions installed, Click play, right click, click open SD youtube movie in quicktime, wait however long it takes to buffer or suffer through hiccups.

OR

Open Webkit, Open Developer options, paste the profile, click on a video, fullscreen it and just watch.
 
Adamscomputerrepair said:
Yeah I have the drill memorized. Open TFF, Go to Youtube, Click a video, Make sure you're HTML5, make sure you have the right extensions installed, Click play, right click, click open SD youtube movie in quicktime, wait however long it takes to buffer or suffer through hiccups.

OR

Open Webkit, Open Developer options, paste the profile, click on a video, fullscreen it and just watch.
Click to expand...

For me it's open webkit, click on video, watch....that's with 1.67 Powerbook and upwards.
 
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For me on any G4 is open any browser is open it, go to video, wait for full buffer, watch video lag free... on G5, I just open browser, watch video...
 
Gamer9430 said:
For me on any G4 is open any browser is open it, go to video, wait for full buffer, watch video lag free... on G5, I just open browser, watch video...
Click to expand...
Yeah, but the video can get choppy when multitasking for other things. This method was mostly for lower end powerbooks and multi tasking on the G5. If you're going to watch YouTube and do only that, do it normally.
[doublepost=1468028169][/doublepost]
Dronecatcher said:
That will give you a user agent of iOS7 - when you restart Safari it will default to the normal user agent.
In every test I've done, this user agent makes the CPU have to work harder.
Click to expand...
I don't really know why you guys are getting this. Doing this allows my G5 to handle a lot more Webkit windows and tabs as well. Using regular WebKit with more than 3 tabs gets waay to slow for me. Tomorrow when I'm working on it again I'll try it regularly and my way to monitor the CPUs and I'll let you guys know
 
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