Thinkpads Forum

My current setup is 2645-3AU, 2x128MB PC66 memory + onboard memory, 300MHz CPU, windows XP SP3, PCMCIA wifi card, Adobe Flash Player 10.1

I cannot play online youtube videos, I hear the sound but the video is not smooth at all (IE7, IE8, Firefox, CPU always max out 100% in youtube)

If I upgrade to PII MMC-2 400MHz or 466MHz, will that solve my problem?

http://dreamweavermx2.biz/products/medi ... mreqs.html

240p (YouTube)
•Intel Pentium III 450MHz or faster processor
•1GB of RAM

Mantiev.

I have gotten a lot of assistance from the great minds of this fantastic forum, and maybe I can finally return the favor.

I have a method of watching youtube videos on my PII 266Mhz with
360Mb ram laptop, running Win2K.

I want to first say that my method will only work for the lower resolution normal .flv files (I don't remember if 240p works or not, but will look into it). If you use it for 360p or 480p, you will only hear the audio.

Firstly, I use Opera, since it is not as CPU heavy as Firefox.
I also let youtube lead me to links to update my flash player to a version 10 that was compatible with Opera.

1) Create Shortcut
Documents and Settings/(your user name)/Local Settings/Application Data/Opera/Opera/cache/sesn
The "sesn" folder will contain the downloaded youtube videos, suffix is .tmp

NOTE: Don't waste your time with any Opera Widgets to download
youtube videos, as they were problematic (at least, in my experience)

2) Once your youtube video page is loading, hit pause IMMEDIATELY, wait for entire red line to completely fill in across to the right, then go to the LARGEST .tmp file and change suffix to .flv, and also name it to whatever you wish (e.g., clip1.flv), and move it into My Videos folder(or anywhere, as long as you get it out of the sesn folder).

3) Close Opera.

4) Install KMPlayer, and watch all your .flv videos with it.
As I already mentioned, my method won't work with the newer high resolution flv files (i.e., 360p, 480p) since they will have a black screen and only play audio in KMPlayer; while some other flv files video will play, but the sound will be out of sync. You can attempt to correct sync within KMPlayer "playback-->delay audio settings", but it is tricky.

I have tried virtually every free flv player available, and KMPlayer is the lowest CPU user, that actually works well. My method is not perfect, but you will be amazed at the ability to watch downloaded youtube videos on such an old legacy laptop.

Please let us know how it works out on your WinXP system.

VIBM wrote:Mantiev.

2) Once your youtube video page is loading, hit pause IMMEDIATELY, wait for entire red line to completely fill in across to the right, then go to the LARGEST .tmp file and change suffix to .flv, and also name it to whatever you wish (e.g., clip1.flv), and move it into My Videos folder(or anywhere, as long as you get it out of the sesn folder).

Where are the .tmp files located? so I just need to rename the file to .flv and play the file with the player?

Mantiev,

I think that the method described is simply another way of saying that you need to download the file to your computer first, before you play it. There are various sites that organize this for you, including ones that can help you convert YouTube videos from their native "flv" format into something that will play better on older machines with slower CPUs, like for example the old MPEG format.

I am no longer current on which are the best services for this, but one such service used to be KeepVid:
http://keepvid.com/

It may be that keepvid requires you to downoad some kind of Java applet, so they may not be the best choice. But I am sure that there are other similar services that can help with this, without requiring you to rummage around your temp directory or change file extensions to get things to work.

Phil.

manteiv wrote: Where are the .tmp files located? so I just need to rename the file to .flv and play the file with the player?

It was explained in part 1):
1) Create Shortcut
Documents and Settings/(your user name)/Local Settings/Application Data/Opera/Opera/cache/sesn
The "sesn" folder will contain the downloaded youtube videos, suffix is .tmp


And yes, to reiterate, you rename the .tmp file to .flv, AFTER it is
completely downloaded.

pkiff wrote:Mantiev,
It may be that keepvid requires you to downoad some kind of Java applet, so they may not be the best choice. But I am sure that there are other similar services that can help with this, without requiring you to rummage around your temp directory or change file extensions to get things to work.
Phil.

Phil,

Yes, my method requires that you download the flv file FIRST, using OPERA.
I forgot to mention JAVA, so thanks for reminding me.
It is important to NOT INSTALL JAVA on your weak legacy laptop. Java is required by keepvid and vixy.net, and is very problematic using a weak computer; and so is using Firefox with Download Helper, which is too much of a CPU hog. I tried them all.
Renaming and changing the .tmp file is not a big deal, and is worth
doing, to avoid other headaches.
I have spent countless hours testing all the possibilities I could find, so I highly doubt there are "similar services that can help with this, without requiring you to rummage around your temp directory or change file extensions to get things to work, FOR a WEAK legacy computer". I would love to be proven wrong.

When I get a chance I will see if I can convert the higher resolution
360p and 480p flv files to MPEG with Avidemux, and see if the audio and video will both play properly.

KMPlayer now uses less resources than VLC?

Radioguy wrote:KMPlayer now uses less resources than VLC?

I was unable to install VLC, but according to the last poster "anon" at the bottom of the page, of this link-
(http://text.broadbandreports.com/forum/ ... FLV-player),
the answer is yes.

Initially, Wimpy player worked, but most likely, because of all the installing and deinstalling of different programs, it stopped working for me.

On systems that are marginally strong enough for video playing, it may also be worth trying Media Player Classic, which I think has a slightly smaller footprint and slightly lower CPU overhead than VLC. But in that case, I recommend that you manually choose and install each particular codec that you think you need, rather than using a pre-compiled codec package.

For some people, Media Player Classic is a bit too finnicky because of the need to install the codecs separately. But it is a great player for old, legacy thinkpads.

Phil.

VIBM wrote:I was unable to install VLC, but according to the last poster "anon" at the bottom of the page, of this link-
(http://text.broadbandreports.com/forum/ ... FLV-player),
the answer is yes.

I hate to sound like a nitpicker....but I didn't see the post date (July '09) from the link you posted, so I went to the standard link. I know that's not too long ago, but VLC is up to version 1.1.4 now. I'd be less skeptical with a current benchmark comparison.

Radioguy wrote: I know that's not too long ago, but VLC is up to version 1.1.4 now. I'd be less skeptical with a current benchmark comparison.

Unfortunately, the link is the only one I could find with actual benchmark comparisons.
However, I believe it was VLC version 1.1.0 that I was unable to install on my old win2K laptop. I was getting an error message (but can't remember what it was, unfortunately).

pkiff wrote:On systems that are marginally strong enough for video playing, it may also be worth trying Media Player Classic, which I think has a slightly smaller footprint and slightly lower CPU overhead than VLC. But in that case, I recommend that you manually choose and install each particular codec that you think you need, rather than using a pre-compiled codec package.

For some people, Media Player Classic is a bit too finnicky because of the need to install the codecs separately. But it is a great player for old, legacy thinkpads.

Phil.

Yes, for me, Media Player Classic (6.4.9.1) was not working well either. However, it was just an .exe file, and not an installer. Where are the codecs installed?

VIBM wrote:[...] for me, Media Player Classic (6.4.9.1) was not working well either. However, it was just an .exe file, and not an installer. Where are the codecs installed?

Having just an exe file that runs without requiring an installer is part of what some people used to like about Media Player Classic. If you don't like it, you know that its installation it hasn't strewn files all over your system and you can just get rid of it.

If trying out MPC, be sure to get the latest version, which I think is available here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli2/

The codecs are installed separately by finding the codec on the web and installing the actual codec package from whoever makes that codec. In Windows, that is the normal way of installing and managing codecs. A properly installed codec is not specific to a particular player but is installed for the operating system, and then when any player in the system needs to render a particular kind of video stream, it will use the same codec (decoder). So, for example, to get divX or Xvid codecs, you need to go to the divX or Xvid sites:
http://www.divx.com/en/software/divx-plus
or
http://www.xvid.org/

For FLV files, I think you have to use ffdshow and get it installed correctly, and then there may be another set of files to install after that, I'm not sure

It is also possible to install a codec "pack" which includes a bunch of different codecs all together in a single download. The theory behind a codec pack is that a good pack can be put together so that you have the best codecs that work together without conflicts all in a single download for a specific player, or a specific version of that player. Some codec packs actually come with a version of Media Player Classic that they will install along with the codecs. In my experience (several years ago now), however, I always found that the codecs from such packs were difficult to adjust if you wanted to customize them yourself, or if you wanted to upgrade the player, or whatever. And there were inevitably several codecs that a pack would install that you didn't need. I found that I only actually needed a small number of codecs to play all the files I needed, and also found that I ran into the fewest problems when I manually installed each codec on an as-needed basis.

There used to be quite an art to choosing which codecs would work best with which combination of player, video, and hardware. Only with the introduction of VLC did people stop installing separate codecs or codec packages because VLC comes with its own codecs instead of using those of the operating system. And later versions of Windows come with a bunch of those codecs built in -- or they come with Windows native media player.

Phil.