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| Author | Compatible video compressions? (Read 23178 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Syntho
64 MB  Posts: 103 System 7 Newcomer! 
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on: January 05, 2022, 04:52
I don't fool with video much on my 9600 machines. What video compressions will work out of the box on System 7 in Quicktime, and what specs (res/bitrate) would it need to be to play back without dropping frames? |
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023
Reply #1 on: January 05, 2022, 20:40
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By out-of-the-box we assume that Quicktime is installed, right? There's no definite answer, but here's what I recommend for uploading videos to Cornica and how it's done. Most of that is based on prior experimenting by @cballero who was a great help. Whether frames are dropped or audio going out-of-sync depends on individual machines or even your internet connection (in case of streaming). Generally speaking, running it locally from your HDD is faster than streaming unless your hard disk was produced shortly after the dinosaurs went extinct. My 8600/200 can play the 320x240 videos on Cornica very nicely. Some of the higher resolution ones as well, but it's borderline at times. Your 9600 should be much more powerful. In fact, I'd love to hear what your 9600 is capable of in terms of Quicktime playback!
Last Edit: January 06, 2022, 13:22 by Bolkonskij
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #2 on: January 06, 2022, 03:06
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So here's a neat little tidbit: a company out of Mt. View, California came out with the first DVD video decoding add-ons for Macs, including a sweet PCI-card for 3400c Powerbooks: https://web.archive.org/web/19970415151921id_/http://www.wiredinc.com:80/ Their product offered the first DVD playback on any Powerbook, which was super cool!  it did make me wonder if they also provided their own DVD player or if possibly Mac OS 7.6.1 somehow also had the ability for DVD video format playback to complement this PCI-video card!But natively, the Wallstreet G3 Powerbooks sported the first DVD drive and a matching player specifically made for its second-supported OS version, Mac OS 8.1. I haven't played with it in 68k emulation because the DVD spec is clearly a PPC-only video format, but this also means that the possibility that this player might possibly be compatible with Mac OS 8.0, 7.6.x and maybe earlier OSes due to its close ties to Mac OS 8.1!  This might involve doing some Frankenstein code-hacking of sorts to make that work!  So just a tiny bit more inline with your question, even though I don't really know if the PowerMac 9600 ever supported DVD playback natively, I imagine that the OS could be patched to allow a DVD's MPEG files to be played. However, I'm sure those pieces of the puzzle would depend on the OS your running, so I imagine otherwise it would need some sort of PCI-based DVD decoder card to run with Apple's DVD players. DVD-playback would be real nice though!
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #3 on: January 07, 2022, 02:44
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I had a PM 8600 the last it used the MachV MB and processor card. Mine came as a 300Mhz 604, but when a friend got a G3 upgrade card for his 9600, I picked up his 350Mhz processor. The 8600 had AV inputs, and could do video capture. It seemed really neat that it could do that, however to me in honesty it did it very poorly at least when using the 8600 as a general purpose computer. You needed a fast huge harddrive, and a system that had been stripped to only the essentials needed for the task. I bought a G3-AIO with a A/V personality card at a school auction, and it was an order of magnitude better at A/V than the PM8600. Then later I stuck a video capture card into a dual processor Gigabit Ethernet G4 and it was an order of magnitude better than the G3-AIO. It was a period of rapid improvement in capabilities and those machines from the start of the A/V era that seemed so mighty, actually became almost obsolete by the time you got them out of the box. To me anyway video on PowerMacs was about like mp3s on Quadras, not necessarily impossible, but not pleasantly doable either.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #4 on: January 10, 2022, 11:03
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Having done a lot of video editing on Mac OS (X) PowerPC machines, I beg to differ, wove. I don't know what you did that let you have that experience. I had a lot of raw material that I would transfer to my PPC Macs, edit into a nice trailer, add a music track and then upload them to Google Video (yeah, the days before YouTube, sometime early to mid 2000s). I think transfering raw stuff from the recording device to the Mac got easier & faster nowadays. That used to be awful until Firewire came around. However, I don't see much progress in terms of HOW we edit our movies nowadays compared to e.g. the early iMovie days. Yes, we have faster processors. But we also have bloated OSes and software. Resolutions grew into ranges that few human eyes are still able to differentiate (4K) but in the end it's essentially still the same game - as in so many computing fields. Because your new movie has to be at least Full HD, it's not faster in exporting today than exporting your 640x480 movie back in the day. So from my experience PowerPCs were OK editing the videos of their days just as your Mac Pro is for today's 4K videos. I still prepare all the videos that I upload on my Quicktime archive on my PowerMac, either using QuicktimePro, iMovie or Premiere 5. Though I've installed and played a bit with MovieWorks on my 8600 lately and it looks very nice. Need to do some more :-)
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Syntho
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64 MB Posts: 103 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #5 on: January 24, 2022, 17:23
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I've been tinkering around with videos lately. It'd be nice to watch videos in full screen on my 350 9600, but I don't think it's going to happen. When I play back a standard 352x240 MPEG1 file, it looks completely fine with no frames dropped, but ONLY when the video is the size it should be. When I try to enlarge the video on my screen, it starts to skip and drop frames. I wonder how fast of a machine I would need to watch videos on. Back in the late 90s or so I remember playing MPEG1 videos on my computer in full screen without a single frame dropped and I'm sure they were of the 352x240 variety. The catch is that this was on a CPU that was definitely newer than my 350mhz from my 9600 and IIRC, it was about a 333mhz, probably a Pentium 2 or something running Windows 98. Now that I think of it, I don't even know any software for System 7 that can do *actual* full screen video instead of having a GUI box around it.
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #6 on: January 24, 2022, 18:22
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I distinctly remember watchinh Video CDs in full screen and I think it was on System 7 using this software: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/simple-vcd-22 But remember watching video on a computer was still a pioneering and hip thing back in the days :-) the whole thing really only took off with the G3s and integrated DVD players.
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Syntho
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64 MB Posts: 103 System 7 Newcomer!
Reply #7 on: January 25, 2022, 00:31
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If that's the case, I wonder why I'm getting so many dropped frames. Hmm.
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #8 on: January 25, 2022, 01:37
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Dan at Low End Mac loved vcds and spoke highly of their virtues. I have not looked through the site, but I would guess he would have an old write up covering what he used.
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #9 on: January 25, 2022, 02:42
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I remember (most likely) using Nero (maybe on a Winbox 9X?) to write VCD CD-ROMs that played perfectly well on both my Powerbook 1400cs and 3400c on CD-ROM using SimpleVCD and it's possible that it may have even played back on my Powebook 2300c duo on the hard drive or an external drive.
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #10 on: January 29, 2022, 03:20
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I found another System 7-era VCD player I remember having used called VCD Player to play VCD files full-screen! I went and located a copy and uploaded it to the MG here's the link:https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/vcd-player
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #11 on: January 29, 2022, 07:49
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Great one and thanks for uploading and preserving it! Now the question arises, where to get Video CDs in this day and time ... (sidenote: Good to be back and posting here! Got Covid earlier this week and was pretty much out of order ...)
Last Edit: January 29, 2022, 08:09 by Bolkonskij
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #12 on: January 29, 2022, 18:29
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Hey, I'm glad you're better! Covid is just ruining the party globally since every movement has to be planned out to avoid getting sick or worse  Unfortunately, the VCD market, while it still exists, it is no longer as widespread as it was in its heyday; thankfully eBay sells everything, even old VCDs, most made overseas!  https://www.ebay.com/b/VCD-Movie-Discs/41676/bn_230418 (modern web browser needed) Here's another online vendor, but I'm sure there's a bunch more: https://www.discogs.com/search/?q=vcd&type=all&format_exact=VCD (modern web browser needed) Thanksfully you can rip the videos from your DVDs, Blurays and online video collections and convert them to VCDs to play or VCD images to mount and play on a Mac using burning software like Nero. Hey! That'd be an interesting little project to make and play VCD images on my Powerbook 2400c or my Performa 6360! G3 Powerbooks, PowerMacs, iMacs and iBooks are better suited for DVDs or XviD-based videos which can be played on these Macs with the right video plugins. I even remember creating DVD-ROMs with about six XviD videos that played pretty nicely on all my G3s. I had a few pretty good PCs back then, so a software that came in handy was FairUse Wizard; I always used the free version to put XviD or DivX videos to playback on the hard drive or to put on blank CDs or six videos on a DVD for my Macs with DVD drives: https://www.fairusewizard.com (modern web browser needed)
Last Edit: January 29, 2022, 18:34 by cballero
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