Jerky video playback

The minimum specifications for playing movies and videos from the iTunes Store are:

Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
1 GHz G4 processor or better
QuickTime 7.1.5 or later
16MB video RAM

It's due to the compression used in the videos on the iTunes Store (to get the file size down as much as possible while retaining acceptable quality), which take more processor power to decode than do the compressed videos on a DVD. You may be able to minimize the problems if you make sure that nothing else is running on your system when you try to play back the videos. More RAM may also help if you don't have enough; I'd recommend at least 756MB, and 1GB probably better.

There must be others out there with a prehistoric Mac (only 3 years old for goodness sake!)

Just to be fair, the 800MHz iMac G4 was discontinued in September of 2003, so it's at least four years old.

I'm having the exact same problem. My videos are REALLY choppy. It's just awful! I did everything that the help section said to do, and it didn't make it better. I have a 1.6 GHZ processor and 786 MB of RAM, so I'm thinking I shouldn't be having a problem. I can view streaming video from other sites without a problem. I don't know why I'm having such a problem with iTunes. Their customer support is not much help. Anyone have any ideas? Oh, I moved my files to an external hard drive yesterday. That improved it a little, but it's still annoying.

Sally, you're in the iTunes for Mac area. If you have a Windows system as your profile says, you'll be more likely to get help if you start a new topic in the iTunes for Windows area (please don't just reply to someone else's issue; start your own thread). To start, take a look here and see if any of the tips help:

Troubleshooting iTunes for Windows XP video playback performance issues

If you do have a Mac, please start a new topic in this forum and provide full details - your exact Mac model, OS version, iTunes version and QuickTime version, and perhaps folks here can offer suggestions.

Regards.

I have experienced jerky, halting video playback in iTunes on my Macbook from day one. Why, oh why, should I be seeing 5-10+ second freezes routinely on a machine with spec's like mine? I expect some performance issues streaming high-bitrate vids from my linux SAMBA server over wireless, but these are low-res, low bitrate podcasts stored locally I'm talking about. I mean, a big part of my decision to purchase a Mac is the tightly integrated iTunes podcast support and the oft-touted multimedia superiority of the Mac platform. Why can't this machine play back video in its default player and default formats as well as my 866MHz P3 with 256MB of RAM running VLC? And please don't reply with the "solution" to use Quicktime Player for video playback. Why should I have to resort to this kind of workaround when "It Just Works?"

Vitriolik, if you want help with your issue (as opposed to just wanting to complain), I'd suggest you start a new topic with your issue (use the "Post a new topic" link at the top of each main topic page). It's generally better to ask a question as a new topic rather than as a reply in someone else's thread. It's more courteous to the original poster, and is more likely to get your question the attention it deserves.