Got Mac? Got Slow Youtube? Got Beauty?

I've got a Power Mac G5 with a single 1.8 Ghz PowerPC processor and (as of three weeks ago) 3.5GB of RAM. Youtube videos were still skipping, stuttering, and running slow, even at low resolutions, even when I let them load all the way up. I thought it must be my Mac.

Turns out, no. Thanks to a quick Google-search and fixya.com, I discovered that, according to Macs R We:

"This slowdown occurs on PowerPC Macs when watching movies in Windows formats (mostly WMV or AVI). A recent upgrade to Flip4Mac (the tool that allows Quicktime Player to play Windows-format videos) is the culprit, as it substituted very inefficient Silverlight code on PPCs for the efficient code in earlier versions."

He goes on to give a solution:

"The solution is to downrev Flip4Mac. Use the uninstaller tool in Applications/Flip4Mac. Then download version 2.2.1.11 of Flip4Mac from:
http://www.telestream.net/download-files/flip4mac-wmv/Flip4Mac-WMV-2.2.1.11.dmg
and run the installer. This will replace the efficient code and greatly smooth your movie viewing. If Flip4Mac urges you to upgrade back to the newer version, ignore it."

I didn't have Flip4Mac (links to Apple's page on the latest version), so I had to need to uninstall it, but installing the earlier version has, in fact, made all the difference.

For example, I can now watch this incredibly sharp, stunningly beautiful music video by Kosai Sekine (stunning director; check out more of his stuff) for Jemapur's "Beneath the Water Surface":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uukaqJWdLLQ