Choppy video playback

[Dogasu]

So here's the story:

Within the past month or so, I've noticed that the video playback on my computer has been pretty bad. A lot of the time, the video and the audio will fall out of sync or, in the most extreme cases, will just freeze altogether. It usually happens about 20 minutes into a video and will persist until I restart the computer. It's never frozen up the computer or caused any other programs to behave badly, so I'm thinking it has something to do with the actual programs I'm using.

At first I thought I had too much junk on my computer, so I backed up a bunch of my files and then deleted them. I then did all the spyware/virus scans and cleaned those off, but that didn't help either. Then, the other day, I upgraded my computer's RAM from 256MB to 512MB, but that hasn't helped. The rest of the computer runs great...it's just the video playback I have issues with.

I'm using Windows XP Professional Edition, and the problem occurs no matter what video player I use (Windows Media Player, Real Player, VLC, DivX). My current theory is that I have too many codecs playing at once (probably due to the One Piece mp4 files I download from Kaizoku Fansubs), but I have no idea how to check to see what codecs are running or how to turn any of them off.

So do you guys have any suggestions?

 

[Zhen Lin]

What kind of computer do you have?

Some of the more modern codecs are very processor intensive. H.264, which is used in MPEG-4, is one of them. Also, lately, 120fps videos have become popular and as you can imagine, it takes quite a bit of processing power to handle 120 frames per second.

The other possibility is that your computer is overheating. Check that the airflow is not obstructed.

 

[Dogasu]

What kind of computer do you have?

A Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop.

Some of the more modern codecs are very processor intensive. H.264, which is used in MPEG-4, is one of them. Also, lately, 120fps videos have become popular and as you can imagine, it takes quite a bit of processing power to handle 120 frames per second.

The odd thing is that the files have been working with no problems until just recently. So they either drastically changed the way they've encoded the files (which I don't think they have) or there's some other problem with my computer.

The other possibility is that your computer is overheating. Check that the airflow is not obstructed.

The fan was replaced about a year ago and has been working great since then. The fan isn't obstructed or anything.

 

[TSS_Killer]

You should also check that your video drivers are up to date, as some newer drivers will most likely fix exploits and bugs with the current drivers. Also, another method is to uninstall all of your codecs (since I have a feeling that one of your codecs might be corrupted), then install ffdshow, without the other codecs.

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/codecs_and_filters/ffdshow.cfm

Hope that helps.

 

[Dogasu]

I don't really know how to do any of that...

Also, if the old codecs are corrupted...how would that happen? Is it preventable?

 

[TSS_Killer]

All you would have to do is go to Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, and then find the particular programs which contain the codecs (DivX for example), then uninstall them. Your codecs can become corrupted if either your machine crashed and one of the affected files happened to be a codec dll, or the player crashed and a component became corrupted.

Also, close unnecessary programs. Most likely a spike in either CPU or memory usage can cause video lag.

 

[Dogasu]

All you would have to do is go to Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, and then find the particular programs which contain the codecs (DivX for example), then uninstall them. Your codecs can become corrupted if either your machine crashed and one of the affected files happened to be a codec dll, or the player crashed and a component became corrupted.

I tried that. Didn't help.

Also, close unnecessary programs. Most likely a spike in either CPU or memory usage can cause video lag.

I usually only have Windows Media Player playing by itself.

Also, how do I do this:

You should also check that your video drivers are up to date, as some newer drivers will most likely fix exploits and bugs with the current drivers.

 

[Argy]

My video sometimes gets choppy (although not as bad as yours sounds), and the only way I can fix it is to pause the standard shield provider of my anti-virus, Avast.

 

[Dogasu]

The frustrating thing is that it was working perfectly until a few weeks ago. I used to be able to play two avi files at the same time (for comparison purposes), and I used to be able to play mp4 files. But for some reason, I can't seem to do either these days. It's really annoying.