Powerbook G4 Realtime Video (720x480)

[ender94117]

I need to get a laptop system for realtime video playback at club events and I've been looking into the Powerbook G4. I've read up about how you create compressed video clips and use Final Cut Pro for playback through firewire which sounds ideal. I'm not concered as much with mixing capabilites as I am with portablity.

Here's a few questions:

1. Is it possible through firewire or other interface (if possible) to get fullframe (720x480) video playback without any latency?

2. Would it help to get a really fast 7200 RPM external firewire drive or does the video need to come straight from the interal laptop drive?

3. Is there a better laptop (PC?) out there that would be a better choice over the Powerbook G4 for realtime playback?

Thanks for all help and replies!

-Frank

[skyvat]

1. Is it possible through firewire or other interface (if possible) to get fullframe (720x480) video playback without any latency?

I don't have experience with that. When I play I use a dedicated realtime video program (usually Image/ine or Keystroke) render at 320x240 and output at 640x480 for optimum speed. I use the video out and not a FW out. I've seen some VJs use FCP at full resolution like you would. Don't know the details but I imagine you can get very fast play. My Powerbook can play a file that size without a hiccup.

2. Would it help to get a really fast 7200 RPM external firewire drive or does the video need to come straight from the interal laptop drive?

Video plays fine off a FireWire drive - it does not need to be internal. If you're doing full resolution clips you'll probably need as much extra storage as you can get, plus it's inexpensive.

3. Is there a better laptop (PC?) out there that would be a better choice over the Powerbook G4 for realtime playback?

Don't know about the PC side, but the TiBooks are great machines.

Good luck.

[KillingFrenzy]

I don't recommend using DV format clips.
The main reason is that they're huge, and you'll soon run out of space on your laptop. The second reason is that because the DV codec is highly compressed, you'll find using them in any complicated application that demands much tooling around will bog way down. My friend uses MJPEG at 320x240ish 15fps on his Mac and gets a decent looking output with consistent framerates. Something like this would be my suggestion for clips. This allows you to have a huge database of short clips and loops from 10secs to 6 minutes.

For your content that you want to be longer, or of higher quality. My suggestion is to just use a DV camera/deck and keep it on tape. I edit down sequences to DV, and am happy with the quality and volume of content I keep. I can get this into my vJ app with a line in, so I can still do effects on it, albeit losing some of the scratching options of a clip.

I find that using high quality content off DV mixed with compressed clips makes for an overall impression of the best of both systems.

[skyvat]

I also compress all my clips using MotionJPEG Compression and not DV.

[burstingfist]

Have to agree with KF on this, use DV, Hi8, SVHS, and VHS in conjunction with a computer and/or mixer to generate a nice balance between Hi and lo res images.

[Anyone]

Originally posted by ender94117
I need to get a laptop system for realtime video playback at club events and I've been looking into the Powerbook G4. I've read up about how you create compressed video clips and use Final Cut Pro for playback through firewire which sounds ideal. I'm not concered as much with mixing capabilites as I am with portablity.

Here's a few questions:

1. Is it possible through firewire or other interface (if possible) to get fullframe (720x480) video playback without any latency?

2. Would it help to get a really fast 7200 RPM external firewire drive or does the video need to come straight from the interal laptop drive?

3. Is there a better laptop (PC?) out there that would be a better choice over the Powerbook G4 for realtime playback?

is it very possible to work this way.

if you've got Final Cut Pro on your G4 laptop,
make sure the clips you want to play are pre-rendered on the timeline,
hook up the fire-wire out to a DV cam input,
hook up the DV cam output to your vision mixer,
and off you go !
one good thing with that, is you can scratch along the timeline
with your mouse, or just press play, then hotkeys "j" and "l"
to go play back and forth...

having said that,
if you've got a PC and a good vid card,
you can achieve the same results with premiere
so the choice is yours...

NE1

[Nienzus081]

while MD3 is my main VJ platform I also use Final Cut on my Ti PB for when I take a break and such. I have an hour long clip that is full frame 720/480 that looks gorgeously bright and crystal clear. It simply plays on the beamer as if it was your second monitor. It is also nice to scrub the video with your mouse to the beat of the music. I like using this when I am tired of seeing my hard labored clips look like s*** on MD3 because of compression. Final Cut is a wise purchase for too many reasons..this being one of them!

[holly]

DV will playback without problem, also MJPEG at 640x480 30fps will provide beautiful quality for graphics and animation and is optimized for the G4. I'm not sure why you would want to output through Firewire since the tiBook has a built in s-video.... If $999 is a bit steep for FinalCut, $30 will get you Quicktime Pro, and another $100 will get you the Contour Shuttle control device which magicly makes EVERY video (and audio) program a thousand times easier to use -- I can even edit in QT with single frame control! Makes cutting perfect loops a breeze.

In osX a free program called Cellulo ( http://www.cellulo.info/about.php ) will allow you to keep a playlist handy and control clips from your laptop screen while the video plays over the s-video -- even plays DIVX movies. Internal harddrive or firewire drive will push the video just fine.

Holly.

[burstingfist]

I'm not sure why you would want to output through Firewire since the tiBook has a built in s-video....

The s-video out on the Titanium powerbooks is severely lacking. It has huge black borders, I end up using a scan converter instead.

[holly]

The s-video out on the Titanium powerbooks is severely lacking. It has huge black borders, I end up using a scan converter instead.

Oh, I thought it might be that. Isn't this what they call "overscan" (or "underscan")? It's so your whole desktop shows up on the telly, but makes mixing with another video feed (like tape or DVD) impossible. Are there any laptops that don't do this? If you have two lappys and you're mixing them through a board, would they both have the same borders? Like couldn't you just zoom the projector to hide it? Seeing as how we're talking about doubling a 320x240 video anyway...?

I'm not trying to be pedantic or arguementive -- I use a scan converter for mixing too, but if someone was going to perform only off the one laptop and not mix with other video, wouldn't the s-vid be ok? One less piece of hardware to carry and plug in....

It all boils down to your particular set-up, I suppose.

Holly.