How can I play movies faster on my iBook?

[Rebel581]

I have these videos I want to watch but each time I try it won't run smoothly and a lot of the time will be unbearable to watch. I've tried burning it to a DVD, importing it to iMovie to play it in there, and trying to find ways to make it run faster in Quicktime. Along with trying to find a different application that will run it faster. My iBook is a Dual USB G3 with 500 MHz of speed and 576 MB or memory. It is also a DivX file and I own the DivX 5.component (avi is DivX, right?). So is there anyway to make this video run faster on my computer so I can watch it? And also I've tried changing the movie preferences in Quicktime and tried playing it with 1/2 playback speed. It didn't help much and it was really annoying to listen to so if there's another way besides doing that it would be better. Thank you.

I also looked on the forum search and didn't see any other topics about this so I posted it.

[Case]

You could try other player software, like VLC and MPlayer OSX.
You could convert it to a different format that is less demanding on decoding.
If it has a really big frame size, you could convert it to a smaller size, which will result in smoother playback.
If your movie is severely fragmented on disk (P2P will do that), make a copy and remove the original.

[thoughton]

Let me get this straight ... if you insert a DVD into your iBook it plays too slowly?

[terryj]

MY problem is this:

I've tried burning it to a DVD, importing it to iMovie to play it in there, and trying to find ways to make it run faster in Quicktime.

This in itself isn't correct.

Are you saying you burned the avi files to a DVD
or that you AUTHORED them ( using Toast or ffmpegx)
to a DVD, then re-ripped them via OSEX or MTR back
to DV then imported it into iMovie?!?!?


The files, like Case said, are probably HIGH BR avi files,
MOST DEFINITELY DIVX, which is causing TOAST (?)
huge fits in the muxing.

Take the avi, drag and drop it onto ffmpegx's open summary window.
Select convert preset to .MOV[.mpg4].
Click the video tab, click the best button.
Make sure the video is set to a 1:1 ratio, ie. it is the same
size as going in from avi out to mov file.
click audio, set the setting to aac 192 khz.

click encode, and let it ride.
When its done, play it in QT Pro.
Does it play fine?
if so, burn it in Toast 6.

If not, report back any errors, and the info from the
ffmpegx process log.

[Rebel581]

0_o thank you. Thank you very much. I'll go try that now.

And each of those actions were seperate actions done to the avi movie. Not a series of steps.

[alph]

I may have confused something, but if the iBook has a DVD player and the DVD is properly encoded and authored, how can the DVD be playing too slowly? This is not likely.

Alph

[Rebel581]

The DVD was made to try and play it on a DVD player but itdidn't work so I was trying to get it to run properly on my computer. My computer can't read DVD's unless it's in the DVD burner.

EDIT: Okay, here's what happened. I tried opening it in Quicktime after it was done and an error occurred. It is not a file Quicktime understands (-2048).

I tried opening it in VLC and got this (it gave me the error in a much nicer to read form):

mp4: MP4 plugin discarded (no moov box)
access_file: seeking too far
ffmpeg: av_open_input_stream failed

Maybe I converted it wrong.

.mov mpeg-4
Autosize: 4:3 (I didn't see anything that seemed like you would put 1:1 there)
NTSC FILM
Audio Codec: AAC (MOV/MP4/3GP) w/ encode audio on
Skipped filters, options, and tools

EDIT2: Never mind. At 100% the program wasn't done and when I posted this my computer beeped during it (and at 12:00 in the morning you start to wonder if you have just gone insane) and it worked. I'll post back after I burn it.

[terryj]

Yes, I forgot to mention that if you are trying to
convert a HIGH BR avi, ffmpegx will take a long time,
and do not be fooled by the 100% progress bar, as it can actually go LONGER than 100%, and to just wait until
the Mac beeps, which signals that the file is done trans-coding.

Sorry, i deeply apologize....

Anyway, from the VLC box, it looks like everything is moving along nicely. We await your answers...

[Rebel581]

The MOST random thing happened after I burned the DVD (which took forever because Toast decided it needed to encode the video again just to make sure that it wanted to waste my life). So I start watching it, it starts out okay, then the audio track doesn't match what is going on and the most random things start playing. I think it might have mixed episodes during the encoding (which I don't know how that would happen, I did the encoding with the second harddrive not attached and only one episode is on the main harddrive).

I checked the same time for each video about five minutes in, same seconds, and the scenes were completely different from the original and the burned one. Also the mov file had about 2 extra minutes added to it from the original file.

So... what happened? It makes no sense.

[hexxisoft]

it's messed up. put the files on a disc, bring it to a friend who has a PC, download the trial of tmpegenc express, convert to mpeg2 and burn to a DVD and watch it on your tv.