Mac MPEG problem

[rdaleypa]

Hi All,

I was given an older iMac recently which I was going to use to watch the mpeg files that I recorded with gbpvr. I realize that GBPVR is a PC application but I thought I'd give these forums a shot. I record all my video via GBPVR on a central server and watch them on various computers/laptops that I have. I usually run them directly from the drive on my server.

First off, apple wants you to buy a plug-in for quicktime to play mpeg2 files so I downloaded VLC media center which I have used with great success on all of our PCs, including my daughters P-2 with 128 mb or ram . On the mac, the playback is choppy, even though it has a G4 PowerPC processor and 384 Mb of ram. I only have 10 Gb of hard drive space on the mac so I would rather not download the videos directly to the machine.

Any ideas? Could this be a problem with the video drivers?

Thanks!
Rich

[martint123]

Does it play them ok when you do download them and play locally.
(to pin down net work or video bottleneck)

[InVermont]

I think Apple just hates mpeg2. I have a friend who purchased the QT plugin, and still can't play anything in mpeg2 format.

Can you transcode? When I'm shipping him anything, I'll go to mp4 or wmv.

[nitrogen_widget]

check this out.

http://www.geexbox.org/en/index.html

It's a bootable mediaplayer on a CD.
They say a G4 should work.

It's based on mplayer.

I suppose you can also just try Mplayer to play videos.

[rdaleypa]

Thanks everybody for the help. I will take a look at mplayer. When I set up the processing in GBPVR to convert the files to mp4, they stream fine from server but they are of poor quality when the window is expanded (that converter is meant for video ipod).

I was worried about the plugin because I didn't want to plunk down $20 just to find out it didn't work so I'm glad you said something.

[rdaleypa]

I just downloaded a video to the machine and it plays the same way (choppy).

When I try to load mplayer, I get an error that says the mounting failed because there is no vaild file system (or something like that). It is the same error I got when I tried to download the latest version of VLC (which I found out was for OSX 10.4 and OSX 10.5 only). This is my first mac so I don't know much about it but it is running 10.2.

[InVermont]

Try transcoding to wmv. I have had a lot of luck running that on the Mac (oddly enough)

[GlowTube]

Hi, I watch recorded TV shows on my G4/733 all the time. The dvr-ms format is not supported on Macs, so I first transcode the shows. I use FFMpeg and choose Xvid/MP3 output, which plays back error-free on my Mac. I can store the video on the Mac HD and then play it back, or I can write a data DVD on a PC and play that back without using the local Mac hard drive at all. I use two video players on the Mac, VLC and Mplayer. Be careful, there are two versions of Mplayer for OS X in circulation, one that's a few years old (2005?) and a newer one (but I don't remember the versions exactly). My advice to you is to start by transcoding a TV show that has the smallest data rate possible... that would be a half-hour show in standard def, not HD, and with a 2-channel audio track (not 5.1). Transcode it, burn it to a data DVD, and play it on your Mac with VLC. Should work.

[mikeh49]

You can change the transcoding settings by editing the config.xml file. Find the section for the video iPod conversion and change the size and quality/bit rate settings as you wish. Or, add a new section for mp4, if you wish.

You can get the info on FFMpeg here: http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg-doc.html

Probably will take some experimentation, but I was able to set it up for good quality Xvid conversions.