Why are YouTube videos so slow to load?

All I have to attribute is the 8MB Video Card. I have recently upgraded my Pismo, to a 550MHz G4, 1GB Ram, 100GB 7200 RPM Hitachi HD, etc. I have noticed that while in Tiger 10.4.11, on Youtube, I can watch the videos on normal size, no problems with video/audio sync. But when I go full screen, thats when the audio/video go out of sync....

gblunt,

I would have to agree with Jon R. If you have the first PB G4 12" with an 867MHz CPU, it has 32MB of video RAM (VRAM) and a newer graphics card. I have an iBook G3/800MHz with 32MB of VRAM, and YouTube videos are pretty good if using the default screen size. Your Pismo's graphics chip and 8MB of VRAM does not do well with video streaming.

However, my iBook does have problems streaming Apple's movie trailers. The only acceptable way to watch them is to let them fully load, then play.

GB:

I am able to watch streaming video on my Pismo, but I can't be doing much else on the computer. However, I don't do YouTube and I don't know how that will work. But I do watch news clips or streaming video from CNN, for example. I watch it the default size, and it is fine, with a little problem with video/sound synchronization. Streaming video works a lot better for me with Real Play, though. Almost perfect even with their max size. That is true even on my wife's Pismo with a regular 500 MHz processor and 640 MB of RAM.

I agree with Jon and jpl on the video card limitation. To the best of my knowledge it can not be upgraded.

Cheers 🙂

cornelius

For me, movies and the G3 processor parted ways somewhere around QT7. I have a heavily upgraded Beige G3 minitower that now has a G3/500mHz processor backed by 768MB RAM and a 128MB Radeon video card running Panther, and newer movies are terrible on it. It's nearly impossible to watch any web animation like Apple tends to put on its home page. Our slowest G4 machine, an eMac 700 with 384MB RAM and 32MB video RAM (also running Panther) beats the G3 hands-down.

Older movies I archived from long ago still play fine on the G3. It's newer content that chokes.

Just my two cents in .... I watch youtube all the time granted I hit the reducer button and the picture is quite good , at regular size it is a little choppy but still watchable . I have 10.3.9 watching threw Firefox (although Netscape seemed to run it better and was a much better browser out there than anything else I have used ) with QT 7.4.1 , all this on a Lombard 400 and 256 ram . Turn everything off and only have your browser open I noticed your running 10.4 that also could be what is slowing it down a bit . I've read many that go back to 10.3 because it is a little lighter than 10.4 on these old powerbooks.

freefour:

I noticed your running 10.4 that also could be what is slowing it down a bit .

My experience is that Tiger runs better on my Pismo than Panther ever did. I don't think that it necessarily slows anything down. The way to test it, of course, would be to install them both on the same computer and run the same things on them.

Cheers 🙂

cornelius