H.264 HD Movie Trailers

I've just been to the quicktime movie trailer site, and noticed that they're offering a few quicktime 7 only videos using the new H.264 codec available with Tiger.

I'm running Tiger on a 1.33GHz PowerBook G4 with 768MB of RAM and it can *barely* cope with playing back this video! The CPU monitor hovers around 95-100% usage! (It went to 111% at one point but I think it may be in error )

Can anyone else able to view this vids tell me how they fare with playing them?

Anyone got any opinions on this codec? It's certainly good quality if a bit heavy on the CPU.

#280269

Hmmm CPU at 111%!! OVERCLOCKING!!!!!

*runs screaming about clocks, watches... and something hot...*

Well... I dunno why... what resolution has the video?

#280273

I am running Tiger on a 1.6ghz iMac G5 with 512mb of RAM, and i notice no lag in CPU usage, nor does it hang, the quality is really good, but at 100mb for a trailer, its still a bit large even with my 1.5mb adsl line. The size of it is really nice though, on par with most high quality dvd rips if not better.

#280274

Yeah, "requirements" are a G5, but you can use a G4...

Sucks... at 1080p [or w/e it is] teh full HD size i get like 7 fps... if you resize it down it isn't so laggy

but man it look so crisp and clean...

#280277

i like quicktime, but the **** file sizes are well, ****. they're perfect for movie trailers though on the apple site. i guess with more HDrive space and better broadband becoming more popular overtime, in time this wont be an issue for most people.

#280287

crispy and clean, not useful if it lags like hell...

#280318

crispy and clean, not useful if it lags like hell...

it only lags if you dont meet the requirements

#280319

and I don't meet the requirements. But at the full 1280x53_ pixels it really does look good.

#280336

The new codec is amzing... i was doing some walkthrough animations at work today and compared the h.264 encoding with a similar sized avi and old quicktime codec and the difference was incredible. Unfortunately it was being sent to a client on windows so i had to send the inferior one. Hurry up Apple and release quicktime 7 for windows too!

#280350

Hurry up Apple and release quicktime 7 for windows too!

Damn straight. I wanna see what all the fuss is about.

#280380

Look amazing ! and work just fine on iMac G5 with 768MB

/aviel

#280472

Look amazing ! and work just fine on iMac G5 with 768MB

/aviel

Of course it does! If a iMac G5 can't handle it, than who can?

Off topic:

I see you have free time in the army . All the week-end or only now and then?

#280476

I'm on a PowerBook G4 with 1G ram and there's absolutely nothing wrong watchin' the playback, it's insanely crispy and it needs no more explanation for itself. the only thing sluggish is my boradband connection, it has to serve up to the H.264 capacity. what do u think? =)

#280822

It totally blows on my 12" Powerbook, even when the size is cut to half. Ah well I shouldn't complain my resolution is a mere 1024x768

#280832

Of course it does! If a iMac G5 can't handle it, than who can?

Off topic:

I see you have free time in the army . All the week-end or only now and then?

I have some problems with my lags, so I am free until July

/aviel

#280936

I wounder what the x86/PC requirements is a AMD64x2?? =D well no.. but this is gonna be really intresting

#281214

no. because it's apple technology it will only need a pentium 1 wheras the windows media player 10 codec (if there ever is one) requires a cray computer+Geforce 6800 Ultra sli running windows longhorn.

#281220

no. because it's apple technology it will only need a pentium 1 wheras the windows media player 10 codec (if there ever is one) requires a cray computer+Geforce 6800 Ultra sli running windows longhorn.

I hope youre being sarcastic, otherwise youre wrong. Decoding H.264 will take a lot of processing power and a decent videocard to do it smoothly without lag, I don't think you'll need the latest 3ghz P4 with HT, but a 2ghz P4 seems likely.

#281265

It's not Apple's technology. I have posted in another thread the list of patent owners for the codec and Apple isn't one of them.

They have licensed the codec from MPEG LA.

M$ is one of the patent holders which makes me wonder why it's not available for WMP.

H.264 was designed to transmit high quality HD video using less bandwidth than the current MPEG-2 standard. They did however model it after Quicktimes .MOV file format.

#281270