Video Playback Fine On iPhone - Horrible On Computer

Question

Seen others with this issue. But think this is NOT talked about enough, therefore NOT addressed. Hopefully someone can help me ?
Summary: Record video on iPhone, plays back great on iPhone ( A PHONE !!). Get raw footage to a computer, video plays back horribly choppy and audio out of sync (on a COMPUTER !!). Results for me are the same on ALL players on my computer. Others seem to have it play fine with VLC, but not me.
Here's my stats:
iPhone 4, lastest O.S., latest update.
Computer - PowerBook (laptop) G4 17",  1.67Ghz Aluminum Last PPC Edition (Higher Res model), 2 GB Ram, ALL up to date, latest possible O.S., etc..
Players tested with SAME horrible results - Quicktime PRO (default .mov file), VLC, iTunes, WMV, Flip For Mac. ALL latest versions for above computer at least, etc..
I shoot some video (any length) with my iPhone 4 (which has no video camera settings, sooooo...IDK). Video plays back flawless on iPhone.
Plug iPhone into computer, download RAW uncompressed footage to desktop via "Image Capture". From that moment on (if viewing on computer), the raw footage's movie file) video playback acts like computer can't handle its quality, (choppy, skipping lots of frames, timing horribly off, etc..). Reacts same way with ANY player I use. Actually VLC is the worse, it just completely chokes. Quicktime PRO will at least play it, just horribly choppy. ALL players are up to date.
BUT if I burn a video DVD of it using Toast Pro, etc... then play it on convential DVD player and TV, it plays back awesome ! ALSO, if I "export for web" in Quicktime PRO and wait a amazing amount of time, I get a new file (MP4 or something), and that file will play fine on any player in my computer. BUT it is of a low quality, in which is BS that I have to go so low to view it cause I've played other videos downloaded from the net, or various places and they playback fine via QT or ANY player for that matter. Full screen, high res videos too !!
So I ask, what is the issue ? And why has this not been extensively discussed here and why has Apple not at least publically acknowledged this issue and gave its official word ? Is there something I can do ? Why can't the iPhone have camera settings on it to allow me to lower its video quality ? Or more importantly, why can't my computer seem to handle a simple video file that is really NOT true HD (which is 1920x1080) ? Its honestly not even much above TV resolution (720 x something). My computers screen resolution is 1680 x 1050 dpi, and my video card is a ATI Mobility Radeon 9700, AGP 128.
I could be mistaken, but I am almost sure I've downloaded and viewed movies (in file format) via QT that are of a highe res, better quality even and they playback fine. So can I get some clarification on this please ? Whats going on with the iPhones video capture ? Is it out of frame rate ? Or what ?
Thanks for anyones time --

Answer 1

mcsound wrote:
Given the specs of your computer, I would not expect smooth playback of HD video.  You definitely lack the processor power and are fairly low on the amount of RAM need to do so.
Hi mcsound, thanks for chiming in to help.
I don't know if I agree with this. Mathematic reasoning just don't support this. I agree consumerism does though - lol.
Playing HD don't take much resources, as my old xBox 360 plays HD movies just fine. But the real point is, 1280 x 720 is not HD, sure its a higher res than standard TV, but not by some overwhelming amount that causes issues like this. I can play other high res videos on this computer just fine, from DVD (which actually should be more taxing on the computer), and also from file (which is literally the same).
The xBox 360 has less processing power and less ram than my old "out of spec" computer, and it plays HD movies just fine. Point to all this is, it just aint adding up. The first inclination I agree, is to go buy a new computer. But, if you do the math, there is no reason why a 1.67Ghz processor can't play HD movies. Cause actually, it can, my computer plays them fine in iMovie, and edits HD video and renders HD video and burns HD video, and real 1920 x 1080 HD video, not this faux HD of 1280 x 720. So see how this is not adding up ?
RAM has nothing to do with this either. Playing movies from file or disc uses almost no ram. But editing film does for sure, and at that, these 2GB of ram I got has edited, rendered and made plenty of HD movies.
Look at the screenshots I supplied, the before and during screens of the "System Memory" (RAM) shows that while playing the faux HD iPhone clip, it used only 100mb of Ram.
So again, no reason to think it is the specs of the computer. I agree it could be the video card, or processor MAYBE, but again, why does other HD clips/movies play on this computer smoothly, while anyone taken from the iPhone doesn't ?
If it is the case that the iPhone is just taking a amazingly high quality of 1280 x 720 (higher than other 1280 x 720 cameras for some other reason), then why in the world would Apple not give the iPhone a camera setting to allow us to pick "capture" setting optimized for the end result application we plan on using ?
Either way, this is not ok, and either way, its funny how it gets most people buying into the whole "consumerism" thing. Which is the last thing we need. Don't get me wrong, I buy things like crazy, and will be buying a couple new computers soon, BUT there is no need for it to play HD or several other things people think. HD is not rocket science, and again, HD is old and was supported even when my computer came out. My screen resolution exceeds the iPhones video clips resolution !
There is some framerate controversy I think, or something that the iPhone is doing that other sources are not. But I just can't find it out, and I find it strange there is not more talk about this.