Help! My computer can't handle quicktime

[SashaMitchell]

My computer can't handle movies anymore. I have a mac that is about three years old. I use flip4mac with quicktime and have never had any problems playing all of my clips from Sean Cody, corbinfisher, etc. However, I recently installed a new version of flip4mac and now the movies don't play smoothly. Even if I only have one movie open and close all other applications, the movie is very choppy like I don't have enough memory or something. Is my computer just too old to handle the latest version of quicktime?

 

[hermanding]

sasha, i am gonna be very interested in how the techies reply here, because i was getting stereo streamed from bogota that was a windows station, and my flip4mac was getting it. during this past week, it stopped doing that.
ding

 

[wirega56]

Flip4mac is universal only.
When you right click on the wmv and choose "open with" is wmv player the default ? Have you tried other players like VLC or MPlayer OSX ?
How did you update ? If thru a prompt from flip try uninstalling (applications/flip4mac you'll see uninstaller) and then fetch from their website the latest version.
QT 7.1.3 + is recommended

 

[wirega56]

sasha, i am gonna be very interested in how the techies reply here, because i was getting stereo streamed from bogota that was a windows station, and my flip4mac was getting it. during this past week, it stopped doing that.
ding

What browser are you using ? You could try the re-install and what is the radio station so we can try it out

 

[SashaMitchell]

Flip4mac is universal only.
When you right click on the wmv and choose "open with" is wmv player the default ? Have you tried other players like VLC or MPlayer OSX ?
How did you update ? If thru a prompt from flip try uninstalling (applications/flip4mac you'll see uninstaller) and then fetch from their website the latest version.
QT 7.1.3 + is recommended

Yep, wmv player is the default. I have tried other players like Real Player and they also seem slow.

I followed your advice and reinstalled flip4mac from the website. It's a little bit better but I'm still having problems playing HD videos frfom Sean Cody and especially RandyBlue.

I have a mac iBook G4 with the latest operating system and Quicktime 7.6.

Also, whenever I open a wmv video with flip4mac, a task bar pops up saying "Importing..." This never used to happen with the old version. Do other people get this too?

 

[andysayshi]

The "importing" dialog is normal behaviour for Flip4Mac: the wmv is actually converted in the background for Quicktime compatibility.

How full is your hard drive? It could be that, if very full, the disk is struggling to store the conversion information used for playback.

I don't know how "HD" the HD videos you're playing are, but I'd be surprised if an ibook G4 could play true HD very reliably. I also note that Sean Cody, at least, has Quicktime content anyway - you should always use QT when it's an option.

 

[SashaMitchell]

^Really? I always download the wmv option at Sean Cody. I don't know why--I guess I'm just used to it. That and I tried the quicktime option once and for some reason the video didn't download correctly. Is the picture quality better with the quicktime option?

In the past I've had problems with slow video when my hard drive was full. But there are several gigs of space available now so that's not the problem.

 

[andysayshi]

wmv is fairly universally recognized to be the WORST media container format of them all, although you don't notice the terrible control capabilities if you use QT and flip4mac, as the whole file is converted for the much better functionality of Quicktime's player.

There's no guarantee pictures will be better with either format - that's up to the author's encoding choices - but there is certainly the potential for QT to provide better quality pictures within the same file size.

 

[hermanding]

wiregas - the station you asked about is HJCK in Bogota. this is the link

http://www.hjck.com/envivo.htm

I run safari 3.2.1 latest. leopard is 10.5.6 quicktime player is 7.6 (472)
ding

 

[ANDORYUU]

My computer can't handle movies anymore. I have a mac that is about three years old. I use flip4mac with quicktime and have never had any problems playing all of my clips from seancody, corbinfisher, etc. However, I recently installed a new version of flip4mac and now the movies don't play smoothly. Even if I only have one movie open and close all other applications, the movie is very choppy like I don't have enough memory or something. Is my computer just too old to handle the latest version of quicktime?

I doubt your system can't handle QT since it worked fine before. Try downloading QT from Apple and see if that fixes your problem. If it continues try doing the same with Flip4Mac.

Have you adjusted any of the Flip4Mac settings?

 

[wirega56]

wiregas - the station you asked about is HJCK in Bogota. this is the link

http://www.hjck.com/envivo.htm

I run safari 3.2.1 latest. leopard is 10.5.6 quicktime player is 7.6 (472)
ding

Thanks I enjoyed some Jazz in stereo and was surprised how good the stream was. I had no problems with either Firefox or Safari. Have you uninstalled reinstalled flip and tried again.

 

[andysayshi]

Also check with your internet provider that you haven't had your download speed throttled/reduced for any reason.

 

[hermanding]

on the speed, don't think that has happened, andy, because i get streaming from other bogotá stations and US stations with iTunes, quicktime, realtime, etc. with no problems.
wirega56, i will try this flipformac reinstall. one thing i notice for myself now when the hjck rooster comes up is that NO LONGER is there a little bar in the box with the forward arrow as it used to be
ding

 

[hermanding]

i uninstalled and reinstalled flip4mac. when i pull up the hjck site, it brings up a box that says perhaps windows media player can play it - would i like to try- i click yes, and it starts playing . so, that will work for me, and i put hjck back into my favorites
thanks much and i hope sasha gets her problem resolved too
ding

 

[wirega56]

Yes get Perian regardless
From the site the QT versions are mp4, I'd go for them rather then the wmv.

This Quicktime movie is encoded with H.264 / AAC, which uses the latest innovations in compression technology to provide incredible video and audio quality.

You can download a Quicktime movie by selecting one of the sizes above. The following sizes are available:

Small - 320 x 180 frame size. File size: 30 MB

Medium - 480 x 270 frame size. File size: 59 MB

Large - 640 x 360 frame size. File size: 107 MB

X-Large - 960 x 540 frame size. File size: 220 MB

 

[wirega56]

on the speed, don't think that has happened, andy, because i get streaming from other bogotá stations and US stations with iTunes, quicktime, realtime, etc. with no problems.
wirega56, i will try this flipformac reinstall. one thing i notice for myself now when the hjck rooster comes up is that NO LONGER is there a little bar in the box with the forward arrow as it used to be
ding

I forgot to mention that the play area is grey on FF but appears in Safari, it still streams which is more important

 

[SashaMitchell]

I doubt your system can't handle QT since it worked fine before. Try downloading QT from Apple and see if that fixes your problem. If it continues try doing the same with Flip4Mac.

Have you adjusted any of the Flip4Mac settings?

Ok, I downloaded QT from the Apple site. I noticed there are two versions of QT to download--one for Leopard and one for Tiger. I downloaded the Tiger version because that's what I have operating on my computer but...

No effect! My videos are still choppy and slow. I also can't play videos correctly in Safari--the colors are all saturated. This is very frustrating!

Thanks for your suggestions. At this point I think I will try to downgrade QT and Flip4Mac to whatever version I had before that worked!