[iFerret]

Hi Folks!

I've trying to watch the Stevenote from MacWorld San Francisco
2006 (from the link on the Apple page). Basically I can watch the first 15 seconds of video with sound, then the sound cuts out and as Steve walks on stage the video goes pixelly, jumpy cutty and slow.

Previously, I managed to watch the first 20 minutes of it fine, then the video did all of the above.

I have Quicktime 7.0.2, on a Compaq Presario S3060AN from 2003 runnin Windows XP Home Edition. The video I am trying to watch is linked to from the Apple site.

I would appreciate it if someone could help me here, as I didn't get to attend MacWorld and I would reallly like to watch the Stevenote.

Thanks!
Anthony

[PB PM]

Your lucky to get it working at all, I've never got a Keynotes to work, I just get the quicktime window with the buffering screen for hours.

[DMBand0026]

Sounds to me like your connection is too slow to handle the stream. Stevenotes are streamed in H.264 which requires high bandwidth to stream well, and also a fast computer to handle it.

Open Qucktime, go into Quicktime Preferences, under "Streaming" find the drop box that allows you to select your connection speed. Select the speed one below the bandwidth of your connection...ie, if you have a 1Mb/s Cable connection, select 768Kb/s connection speed. This will allow you to still have some bandwidth room to work with and may solve your problem. If it doesn't, go to the next lowest speed. If that doesn't solve it, than the problem may be elsewhere.

[PB PM]

I think it might be else where, no clue as to the speed of my cable connection though so I'll have to try each setting. Would a 1.2Ghz G4 be able to stream this?

[Banana]

Maybe upon opening the stevenotes, pause the movie and allow it to download completely, then play it. I've found that it usually iron out weirdness I experience when playing it streaming.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Banana Maybe upon opening the stevenotes, pause the movie and allow it to download completely, then play it. I've found that it usually iron out weirdness I experience when playing it streaming.

There is no such thing as downloading during a stream. As soon as you pause, the data is gone.

Unless, that is, someone knows a link to watch the keynote offline.

[Banana]

I've always had done it many times whenever I had a poor connection; I just click the pause button when movies start to play and wait until the content is fully loaded before playing. Granted, no data is being saved, but surely has to be downloaded somehow...

or are we talking about two different things?

[Brad]

Yes, you're thinking of something different.

There are generally three types of movies:
1. "Normal" movies that must load completely before playing.
2. "Hinted" movies that download normally, but can start playing once a sufficient segment has downloaded.
3. "Streaming" movies that download only on demand. Once you hit pause, the download stops. When you hit play, the download resumes, but only enough to keep a small buffer ahead of the current frame. The big benefit here is that you can immediately jump to any part of the stream without waiting for the preceding parts to load.

Apple's keynotes are type 3. Most videos, such as the movie trailers on Apple's site, are created as type 2.

[Banana]

Brad,

Thanks for the Good to Know™ info.

[Brad]

*nod* Always glad to help.

[mattf]

Originally Posted by PB PM I think it might be else where, no clue as to the speed of my cable connection though so I'll have to try each setting. Would a 1.2Ghz G4 be able to stream this?

I watched the Keynote on my 1.2GHz G4 iBook and the stream only farted once.

[PKIDelirium]

I watched it on my 1.42Ghz G4 iBook and it was horrible.

[onlyafterdark]

I could never get the thing past the connection image on my iMac and my PB.

When I tried it on a PC it was very choppy and was without sound in many places, forcing me to pause the stream and start again.

[Dorian Gray]

The stream here played absolutely flawlessly from start to finish for me, on the day after MacWorld. The quality is better than any streaming video I've ever watched. I just tried it again and it still works perfectly. It uses about 40% of the CPU time on my 1.2 GHz iBook G4, so any decent computer will play it effortlessly.

Originally Posted by DMBand0026 Stevenotes are streamed in H.264 which requires high bandwidth to stream well...

I'm not sure what you mean by this. H.264 requires less bandwidth for a given quality than any other video codec in existence.

First thing to try is to download the latest version of QuickTime. I've never understood people who are aware enough about versions that they post the version they're using, yet haven't taken advantage of the free updates for months or years. Version 7.0.3 "delivers several important bug fixes, primarily in the areas of streaming and H.264 video", and Version 7.0.4 delivers "H.264 performance improvements" and important security enhancements, so these are hardly unimportant updates.

You will need a good connection of course. The stream peaks at over 1 Mbps.

[iFerret]

Okay folks:

I downloaded the latest version of Quicktime (7.0.4) tried again and it didn't work.
My internet connection is around 256 kbps.

I'll just find out what went down from somewhere if I can't get it working.

Thanks for the help so far.

~Anthony

[Dorian Gray]

QuickTime adjusts the streaming bitrate to whatever is appropriate for your connection. With a connection speed of around 256 kbps the MWSF stream should be 320 x 176 pixels, 16 kHz AAC audio, 8 fps video H.264 video. Is this what you're getting if you hit Ctrl-I while playing the video? If any of the values are higher than these, that would explain your problem.

To force QuickTime to choose a lower bandwidth, manually input your connection speed in QuickTime Preferences (it may be set too high: 512 kbps for example). "Automatic" should work but sometimes it's better to manually restrict it if you're having problems.