If you have an older Mac and find that YouTube videos don't play very well in Safari here is a workaround. It uses a Safari plugin called ClickToFlash to send the video to QuickTime Player.

In my experience on G4 Macs, videos which are unwatchable in Safari play perfectly in QuickTime Player. Note that ClickToFlash works in OS 10.4 and up. (It may work in earlier versions of Mac OS, but I haven't tried and the CTF web site doesn't mention earlier versions.)

You may need to have Perian installed (I haven't tested it without Perian). Perian allows QuickTime to play a lot of different formats:
[www.perian.org]

Install ClickToFlash.
[rentzsch.github.com]

ClickToFlash replaces every Flash item in a Safari window with a grey block. You can click on the block to display that bit of Flash content. You can also "whitelist" an entire site, in which case CTF will not activate for that site. If you whitelist YouTube you will not be able to access CTF to send a video to QuickTime Player.

A CTF window for a video will have a "gear" symbol in the upper left of the block. This accesses CTF's options. In YouTube, one of the options is "Play Fullscreen in QuickTime Player". If you select this option, QuickTime Player will open the video and play it in full screen mode. Hit the "esc" key if you want QuickTime Player to revert to a standard player window.

Note that CTF will not cause the YouTube video to play in Safari, using the QuickTime plugin. It will cause it to play in the QuickTime Player application.

If you want to save the video, just save it in QuickTime Player. It will save as a .mov file.


As far as I have found, ClickToFlash can only do this for YouTube. If you find other sites where CTF can do the handoff to QuickTime Player please post that here. Ditto if you have any other tips on playing Flash video on an older Mac.


As an added bonus, you will likely find that blocking Flash content speeds up your web browsing and keeps your older Mac from bogging down on processor-intensive Flash content on web pages.


Good luck.

- Winston

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Be seeing you.

does Miro still handle videos like this on older hardware?
[www.versiontracker.com]

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[twitter.com]

Miro works on my 667 MHz TiBook running OS 10.4.11. It plays Flash video decently, but the program itself is very slow to open.

But there is not a seamless way I have found to get Flash video into Miro. The approach I have taken is to load the Flash video in Safari, then open the Activity window, and double click on the video there to either download it, or in some cases it loads as text in a new Safari window and I have to save it. I can then play this file in Miro.

In most cases the Flash video is recognizable as the largest file (in MB) in the Activity window. Recently I have found a few links which don't list a file size, so it's a bit trickier to recognize.

On hulu (which I have only been to once, trying to figure this stuff out) the Flash video was not recognizable in the Activity window.

I think Perian added Flash video support for QuickTime Player only recently. In the past Flash video would not play in QuickTime Player.

One other note: I am not sure what is going on with the YouTube when it passes a video to QuickTime Player. The video is converted to .mov to play - as I don't have to use "Save As..." to save it. I think Perian is doing the conversion on the fly.


- W

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Be seeing you.

Quote
Winston
Note that CTF will not cause the YouTube video to play in Safari, using the QuickTime plugin. It will cause it to play in the QuickTime Player application.

FYI Snow Leopard actually does play the video within the YouTube page in Safari, using the QuickTime plugin-when choosing "Load H.264."

Regarding Perian, it's not being used for YouTube streams. When you choose either of the H.264 options you're getting the iPhone-friendly file YouTube makes available automatically to that phone's MobileSafari. So does CTL spoof the browser ID here I wonder … ?

You can verify Perian presence when you choose the full screen version, hit Escape (to get back the menubar etc.) and open Quicktime Player's Movie Inspector and look at the file info as it streams. Perian would be named there in parenthesis, like it is when you play a local .flv video.

Quote
deckeda
FYI Snow Leopard actually does play the video within the YouTube page in Safari, using the QuickTime plugin-when choosing "Load H.264."

Regarding Perian, it's not being used for YouTube streams. When you choose either of the H.264 options you're getting the iPhone-friendly file YouTube makes available automatically to that phone's MobileSafari. So does CTL spoof the browser ID here I wonder … ?

You can verify Perian presence when you choose the full screen version, hit Escape (to get back the menubar etc.) and open Quicktime Player's Movie Inspector and look at the file info as it streams. Perian would be named there in parenthesis, like it is when you play a local .flv video.

In Tiger (10.4.11) ClickToFlash also has an option to play h.264 video in YouTube. However, on my TiBook this still results in unwatchable video.

Thanks for the explanation on checking on Perian.


- W

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Be seeing you.

A few test videos show that CTF is sending h.264 video to QuickTime Player. The QTP Movie Inspector does not mention Perian. However, the About Perian pane in System Preferences lists h.264 as one of the formats Perian supports. The Installed Plug-ins window from Safari's Help menu does not list h.264 as one of the formats which QuickTime supports directly (unless h.264 is called something else).

What extension would an h.264 movie have? The YouTube source URL doesn't list an extension. QuickTime Player saves the movie as a .mov file.

One example from QTP Movie Inspector

Source:
[www.youtube.com]

Format:
AAC, Stereo (L R), 44.100 kHz
H.264, 320 x 240, Millions

FPS:
24.99

Playing FPS:
25

Data Size:
3.13 MB

Data Rate:
317.62 kbits/s

Current Time:
0:00:01:22.59

Duration:
0:00:01:22.59

Normal Size:
320 x 240 pixels

Current Size:
320 x 240 pixels (Actual)



- W

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Be seeing you.

Check this out first: Container vs. codec

H.264 is a video compression standard. So, it's a codec. Files encoded as H.264 typically appear in the MP4, M4V or MOV containers but Flash (FLV) is capable of that now as well.

You won't see plugins for that on anything Apple because OS X uses QTKit (the Quicktime framework) natively—no plugin per se required. It's part of the OS. It' s QT that handles H.264 MP4, M4V or MOV files. For H.264 that may appear in a Flash (FLV) or other container you need Perian or an explicit plugin. Just like the old days.

Also, because codecs and containers work together it's common to refer to the mix as a "format" but that's where confusion begins. MP4 or H.264 aren't "formats" anymore than Flash is, for example.

BTW, I've been using Winston's setup on G4s as slow as 450 MHz (Cube) and it actually makes web video tolerable on these older machines.

I think I get the codec vs. container difference. But boy, has the industry done a lousy job presenting this to consumers.

For example, when ClickToFlash gives me an option to play a YouTube video in Flash or h.264, it's giving me one option as a container (Flash) and the other as a codec (h.264). Perian also appears to mix codec and container info in the list of what it supports.

No wonder I'm confused. Most people are used to having a file be of a specific type. (i.e. a .doc file is a .doc file is a .doc file). This container business sounds almost designed to befuddle the ordinary user.


Thanks much for the help.

- Winston

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Be seeing you.

Exactly. It's funny how names become commonplace. Macromedia had the advantage of naming their's whatever they wanted, and who can argue with a name like Flash? I'd guess H.264 is easier to remember than "MPEG 4 part 10."