VLC is not well optimized for AltiVec.

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Really? I don't know if it is related, but every version I try will crash every time under Tiger on a 500 MHz G3.

Some people have reported decent performance with Movist or CorePlayer,

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I'll give those a try. Ae they freeware or shareware?

but I just use QuickTime 7 and Perian playing back H.264 on my Luxo G4.

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I might do that instead since it's already built in the the OS.

It works well enough.

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Good! I just want it to work "well enough" without overtaxing the computer. What speed is your G4? I'm trying to do this on a 1 GHz PowerBook, perhaps that has something to do with it (too slow, etc.)?
Well, .MOV and .AVI may be container files, but what could I put into those "containers" which wouldn't be too excessive in the resource department? What formats did old Quicktime (2.0-3.0, as found in System 7.xx thru Mac OS 8.6) use in the .MOV container? I spent like all day once, not knowing a thing about what I was doing (therefore making it impossible to reproduce, hence this thread), I actually produced a file which could playback relatively smoothly on a 500 MHz G3.

I will play around with stuff, keeping in mind what everyone has suggested so far, and will report back on my findings.

c