emac 1.42ghz choppy youtube (flash) videos

[Arik5405]

I purchased an older eMac to play around with OS X because I've never had a Mac and just wanted to have something to learn about OS X on. When I try to watch videos on Youtube or MLB.tv the videos are choppy and pretty much unwatchable unless turned down to lowest possible quality settings (as far as MLB.tv goes). The spec of the eMac are as follows:

Running Leopard with the latest updates
1.42Ghz G4 CPU
OCZ 2gb DDR 400 Ram
Seagate 7200.10 750gb IDE hard drive
Ati 9600 64Mb video card
Dual Layer DVD Burner

I tried updating Flash, Shockwave, and tried Safari and Firefox and they are both pretty much the same.

Can this machine seriously not handle Flash videos?? Is there some tweaks or anything I can do to make it better? The rest of the system feels pretty snappy for a 3 year old computer.

 

[Kmax82]

Does this happen with all video? or just like the HD feeds?

 

[Arik5405]

pretty much all flash video. The MLB.tv video has to be set to pretty much the lowest possible quality to be even close to watchable. Youtube videos look aweful as well. I am playing an AVI (xvid) move file (Anchorman) right now off of the hard drive and it looks perfect in full screen and everything.

 

[Kmax82]

Hmm.. yea. AVI's are going to run better than Flash video on a PPC machine, but you still should be able to watch videos.

I would try to create a new user account and see if the problem persists with the new account. If so, then I'm not sure.

 

[Arik5405]

ok i will give that a try, and thanks for the replies/potential help

 

[Arik5405]

Originally posted by: Kmax82
Hmm.. yea. AVI's are going to run better than Flash video on a PPC machine, but you still should be able to watch videos.

I would try to create a new user account and see if the problem persists with the new account. If so, then I'm not sure.

That didn't seem to work thanks for the suggestion though.....

 

[TheStu]

Flash SUCKS massive, massive, MASSIVE donkey bits on OS X. My 1.83 GHz Core Duo will stutter and chop up on youtube videos too, so don't feel too bad.

 

[mmntech]

Unfortunately, it's a problem with Flash itself on Mac. I had the same problem with my 1.33ghz iBook G4. It started after I installed Leopard on it but got worse after upgrading to Flash 10. Even on newer systems, regular Youtube videos max out the CPU. Adobe has terrible support for Flash on all operating systems except 32-bit Windows. The fact that there's still no 64-bit Windows version says a lot.

 

[Arik5405]

wow that sucks. I'm happy to hear it isn't something with my system, even though I didn't really shell out a lot of money for it but I feel a little bit better now, although I am still very disappointed that a company like Adobe is "lacking" when it comes to Flash on OS X. I'm sure there isn't really any alternative or anything we can do about it is there?

 

[chcarnage]

There's nothing but hope for better times :roll: I created a thread because of the same problem on very similar hardware here.

 

[Tegeril]

G4 and Flash are like oil and water. Sorry

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: Arik5405
wow that sucks. I'm happy to hear it isn't something with my system, even though I didn't really shell out a lot of money for it but I feel a little bit better now, although I am still very disappointed that a company like Adobe is "lacking" when it comes to Flash on OS X. I'm sure there isn't really any alternative or anything we can do about it is there?

Unfortunately no. And in fact, even waiting probably won't get you anything from Adobe. If they can't make Flash run halfway decent on current hardware, there's no way they'd put any effort at all into optimizing it for dead-end hardware like PPC Macs. So unfortunately you're pretty much F'd.

 

[RandomFool]

My friend ran into the same issue with his G4 Mini. It's weird because he swears that when he first got the thing youtube worked fine but these days it's a stutterfest. He ended up buying a new MacBook.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: mmntech
Unfortunately, it's a problem with Flash itself

correction. even on modern hardware such as my new laptop, it absolutely kills battery life. Sadly it has taken hold (youtube, hulu, etc) and slow CPUs just don't cut it.

 

[Arik5405]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster

Originally posted by: mmntech
Unfortunately, it's a problem with Flash itself

correction. even on modern hardware such as my new laptop, it absolutely kills battery life. Sadly it has taken hold (youtube, hulu, etc) and slow CPUs just don't cut it.

bummer. anyone want to buy an emac?

 

[Hacp]

silverlight>flash

 

[Kmax82]

I hope that more and more people begin to use HTML5. I would love for nothing more than to see Silverlight and Flash die a horrid death. Of course it won't though, because it'll take MS another 3 years before they'll release IE9 with HTML5 support.