Im trying to watch a simple .avi file. I'm running an iMac G3, 400mhz processor, 328 ram. Ive tried a long list of programs, Chroma, Quicktime, VLC everything unexpectedly quits when opening a video file. How do i fix this? I just want to watch a simple pinky and the brain episode!!

Try installing Flip4Mac, which should allow Quicktime to play this video on your Mac.
www.flip4mac.com

i have flip for mac but it still crashes the program

I have major issues with my iMac G3. I think VLC works better for me than Quicktime so give that a go.

VLC works better than the others on the iMAc but it always give me error messages saying the frames skip and that the computer is too slow. So whenever i watch a video its really choppy and it skips around a bunch

Yeah I know what you mean. The thing is I later swapped my 400Mhz iMac for a 500Mhz iMac and weirdly I can now playback movies on the 500Mhz iMac. 95% of the time it's smooth now where as previously it was like 40%

400Mhz is just slow for newer avi Codec. With Mplayer tried?

An avi file can be just about anything, because .avi is little more than Gladware sealing up another video codec. Therefore, without more information, there is little we can do. Click the file, hit command-I, and then tell us what video codecs are involved here (it *should* say something about it somewhere in the info box).

350mhz/768MB RAM G3 B&W cant play AVIs well... but they look fine if I'm drunk so have you tried that?

im not at my g3 now but would upgrading the RAM in it from 328 to 512 make any difference at the speed in which the applications and vlc would go?

More RAM is always good.

Recent (modern) video is just plain choppy on any G3 under 800 MHz no matter how much RAM you have. Just fact.

One thing I could never get though is that my 8 year old pc played divx files just fine (god rest it's sole). Why can't a G3 of the same or later time frame also play divx files as smoothly?

Were macs built poorly back then or something?

I have also noticed this. I actually just reloaded Win2K on a friends PC with DivX and the most recent Video Players I could find (VLC) and it plays video just fine (without doing much else of course). It was made in 1999 and only has a 600Mhz Celeron processor with 256MB RAM (i think the fsb is either 66 or 100 Mhz). Now on a iBook G3 600 Mhz with 640MB of RAM (fsb of 100Mhz), and the video is still choppy. That is using VLC, and the latest DivX / Flip4Mac codecs mind you.

I just don't understand it either...

My 450Mhz P3 with 128MB RAM played Divx just fine back then.

Chances are the software was optimized for the G4 at some point (which happened with most pieces of software, including OS X). This means the G3 won't be able to handle it as well or even not at all due to it not having Altivec.

nothing you can do every mHz counts in an iMac G3. try killing unneeded processes in activity monitor "universal access" use vlc don't use fullscreen set screen resolution to 640x480 thousands of colors. also you could try using aticcelorator II to overclock you GPU (i OC'ed my GPU from about 73mHz up to 80-85mHz w/o a fan. I've heard that down grading to 10.3.9 makes a big difference. The problem may just be your .avi file.
I've watched lots of video on my iMac G3 350 with 512mb ram just fine sum avi files didn't run as good if they ended up being encoded as xvid.

My hardware recommendation is up your ram to 512, get a 7200RPM hard disk, OC your GPU (set screen colors to thousands not millions).