h.264 in OS 9

Anyone had any luck with this? I am all too well aware that an h264 codec wasn't part of QuickTime until QT7. Is there perhaps a 3rd-party codec for QT 6 that can decode h264..? Or could the codec itself somehow be taken from QT7 and used under QT6/OS9..? Did Apple need some selling points for QT7 and deliberately prevent an h264 codec for QT6?

Of course, i can play h264 video using VirtualPC, but it's a freakin slide show. I know--OS9 is a "dead" OS, but i still use it everyday. It's galling that free h264 codecs galore can be downloaded for Windows 95 yet, apparently, not for OS9.

8500/G4, Mac OS 9.2.x

Posted on Nov 18, 2008 12:53 PM

22 replies

paulpen Author

Level 1

38 points

Nov 25, 2008 1:27 PM in response to eww

Um, thanks for that. However, my expectations are actually high. As i said above (more or less), my 8500-G4/700 plays full-screen, 640x480, 24 or 30 fps DivX movies smoothly. That's smoooooothly--without dropping any frames. My G3/400 could almost do that.

SO, i expect my G4 could play lower resolution h.264 smoothly, despite that most horrible of all bottlenecks: the 8500's slower bus. All that's needed is an h.264 codec for OS 9.

C'mon! This is the Earth, in The Galaxy, and we are the Humans, the greatest of species running that greatest of all computer OS's, OS9, so where's the friggin codec??

a brody

Level 10

85,314 points

Nov 25, 2008 1:59 PM in response to paulpen

Edit:

http://www.amazon.com/Conexant-Announces-Decoder-Geared-Digital/dp/B00075URS8

Interesting.
Wonder what happened to that?

Message was edited by: a brody

Limnos

Level 10

428,363 points

Nov 25, 2008 1:52 PM in response to paulpen

so where's the friggin codec??

Yeah, and I wanna buy the latest chart release on 8-track tape! 😉

paulpen Author

Level 1

38 points

Nov 25, 2008 4:22 PM in response to Limnos

Hah, that's funny, but not really a useful comparison. A more appropriate one might be "I want to run Adobe Premiere on my Commodore 64 (hah)", which i don't want to do.

Yes i know, i should do my part to contribute to the faltering U.S. economy by purchasing a brand spankin new Macintosh. Er, wait, Apple doesn't actually make Macs anymore...they only make PC clones that run a different OS. (That's why i like my 8500 and Beige G3 so much--they actually run Mac software, which i have a lot of.) One day i'll try to find a good used G5, but meanwhile, what's needed is an OS9 h264 codec.

Message was edited by: paulpen

eww

Level 9

53,052 points

Nov 25, 2008 6:32 PM in response to paulpen

...what's needed is an OS9 h264 codec.

That and a good inexpensive pocket fountain pen that doesn't leak. And there are probably the same number of people working on both projects, and the same number of people awaiting the results.

You should probably try harder to adjust to the fact that the development of new products for OS 9 is over.

Nov 26, 2008 8:13 AM in response to paulpen

paulpen wrote:
my 8500-G4/700 plays full-screen, 640x480, 24 or 30 fps DivX movies smoothly. That's smoooooothly--without dropping any frames. My G3/400 could almost do that.

Yep, DivX and most other video compression with mp3 audio is a piece of cake for a G4 at 700MHz. And you're spot on, a 400MHz G3 was the very minimum requirement to play full screen DVD video, a 333MHz G3 was considered too slow.

SO, i expect my G4 could play lower resolution h.264 smoothly, despite that most horrible of all bottlenecks: the 8500's slower bus. All that's needed is an h.264 codec for OS 9.

Nope, my dual 1GHz G4, under OSX, struggles with 600x400 h264 video, sometimes without AAC audio. It's only been encoded at 1500kb/s. It's too much for the CPUs.
One point to understand is that it's not the image dimensions of the video that are important, it's the encoded bitrate. So i do 1500kb/s with a max of 2000kb/s, or 1100kb/s with a max of 1500kb/s.
While you can encode full screen, you would be limited to about 600 or 700lb/s. Audio may have to be included in that, so 64kb/s audio and 636kb/s video. It is this bitrate what determines the amount of effort required by your Mac. Full-scren at 600-700kb/s will look very poor, and if it peaks at more than 800-900 (fast action scenes) it will grind to a halt.

So sticking with XviD may be the best option.

paulpen Author

Level 1

38 points

Dec 1, 2008 9:34 PM in response to Simon Teale

Simon Teale wrote:

my dual 1GHz G4, under OSX, struggles with 600x400 h264 video, sometimes without AAC audio. It's only been encoded at 1500kb/s. It's too much for the CPUs.

Huh. Do you only have, like, 128 MB of RAM..? I am not an expert on video codecs, but in general, bitrate is loosely proportional to resolution, so playback quality is therefore loosely related to resolution. Try playing a 320x240 h.264 on your dual 1GHz and i'm sure it will play smoooothly. Of course, a 320x240 video wouldn't normally have a bitrate up around 1500.

Unfortunately, Xvid doesn't really work in OS 9 either because it relies on the unstable 3ivx codec. Fortunately, though, DivX 5 works quite well and there is also the Sorenson MPEG-4 Pro codec. I guess i'll have to write an h264 codec for OS 9 myself.

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h.264 in OS 9