Skipping Videos

[greyeagle64]

Hi, my system is;
AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1460.8 MHz)
Chipset : VT8363/5 KT133/KM133 System Controller
NorthBridge - KT133A
SouthBridge - VT82C686/A/B "Super South" PCI to ISA Bridge
RAM 512 Mb
Hard drive - WD 40GB
DVD ROM - 16x Liteon
CD Writer - LG 32x
Video Card - NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400 64 Mb
Sound Card - Creative Sound Blaster PCI128
OS - Windows XP Professional
The problem I am experiencing is, whenever I'm playing music videos & movies, (from the HD and sometimes CD) they tend to skip intermittently (I'm not sure if this is called fame skipping). I've tried playing the same movies and music videos on a lower end machine and it works fine.
Can anyone help??????

[Budfred]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

First thing to look at is what you have running background while you are running the video. If you haven't tweaked WinXP it has a ton of garbage running in the background and this will eat up CPU cycles leading to choppy viewing. You can go to BlackViper (http://www.blkviper.com/index.html) for details on how to trim it down.

The next thing is whether you have DMA enabled for video in Device Manager. I believe it can also help to have Hardware Acceleration enabled.

[greyeagle64]

Thanks for the info, I went to Black Viper and disabled a lot of stuff, I also enabled my DMA setting. I rebooted my machine and when I played a movie I noticed the problem still exist.
Any other solutions???

[malcore]

What program(s) are you using to play these videos?

[greyeagle64]

I am using four (4) different programs, they are
1. Winamp 3
2. MusicMatch Juke Box 8
3. Windows Media Player 9
4. Light Alloy 2.4
What I did noticed in all the players, MusicMatch Juke Box skips the less as compared to Winamp.

[malcore]

Some ideas, some questions.

What version of DirectX? Are you by any chance using Detonator drivers?

In Display Properties under the Troubleshoot tab is Write Combining checked? If so, try it unchecked. If not, check it. While you are there you could also try sliding the Hardware Acceleration a little to the left to see if that helps.

If you are using Detonator drivers for the vid card, they are really optimized for the Ti series of cards. You could try rolling back to the 30.82 drivers.

If you updated to DX9 after installing the vid drivers, I would re_install the drivers or try different ones like I said.

Have you tried the DXdiag tests? Using the latest Via 4in1 drivers?

[greyeagle64]

Thanks for the suggestions.
1. My version of DirectX is 8.1 (should I upgrade, and if so where do I go to get the upgrade?)
2. The driver for my vid card is Detonator 4 ver 21.83
3. In Display Properties under the Troubleshoot tab I'm not seeing any of the stuff you mentioned. What I get coming up is the Help and Support Center.
4. The part where you mentioned Detonator drivers for the vid card, they are really optimized for the Ti series of cards. You could try rolling back to the 30.82 drivers. I’m at a total lost with what you said here.
5. I have tried DXdiag. test and it reported everything is working fine.
6. What are the Via 4in1 drivers?

[malcore]

I don't think it's necessary to upgrade to DX 9 yet. If you wish to you can do it at WindowsUpdate.

The drivers you are using are pretty old. You can get the 30.82 drivers here (http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=winxp-2k_30.82) . Uninstall the old drivers in Add/Remove programs while in Safe Mode first.

Sorry, the items I mentioned are at Display Properties>Advanced>Troubleshoot. Should be a slider for Hardware Acceleration and a check box for Write Combining.

The Via 4in1 drivers are the chipset drivers for your motherboard. Usually found in the downloads section of the motherboard's manufacturer's website.

Try the other ideas first. You can look into the 4in1s later if need be.

Hope this helps.:)

[greyeagle64]

Thanks for all your suggestion. I took the week-end gone and tried all your suggestions and the problem still exist. I've even gone to a friend of mine who is a computer technician. He told me my machine is working excellent except the problem I am currently expericing but could not say what's causing it.
I really don't know what to do again. Are there anymore options I can try?

[Inka]

Hello, I use my PC for playing all my music, vid & DVD's. I guess you are kinda scratchin about for ideas now! Have you noticed if the CPU usage is running very high when playin movies? I have used most of the apps you list & found them to be quite memory hungry esp with movies. This can cause little jumps every now n then.
I now use cyberlinks PowerDVD as I find it uses the least resources.

http://www.gocyberlink.com/english/products/product_main.jsp?ProdId=28

There is a free trial if you want to try it.
Good luck :)

[malcore]

A few more ideas (and questions ;) )

Do you by chance have Kazaa installed on your system? If so, shut it off when you try to play a video.

Another thing to try is adjusting your screen resolution. If you are at 800x600 try 1024x768 or vice versa. If at 1024x768 try 1280x1024.

You could also try boosting the priority of the media player in Task Manager when you try to play a clip ( open Task manager Ctrl+Alt+Del, select Processes tab,right click on media player program you are using, choose "set priority" and select a setting higher than "normal")

One last thing, have you run any spyware,adware and/or virus scans recently? If not, go to this thread (http://pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15179) and run a scan with Adaware or Spybot. Use an updated virus scanner and run a full scan or try one of the online scans from the same thread.

[mjc]

The other night, a friend told me that he solved a similar skipping problem by removing a PCI USB card....it seems that the USB card was having a conflict/not playing nice with sother items on the PCI bus.

So, moral of the story, you may want to pull other PCI cards as test. If no skipping is eveident without any extra cards start aadding them back in one by one (keep them in the original slots for now). If there are open slots the card that causes the skipping can be tried in one of the different slots, it that results in skip free operation then move on to any other cards.

(Yes XP was supposed to cure the Slot Shuffle.......but)

[greyeagle64]

Guys, I really do appreciate the suggestions that I'm getting, so far I've tried all except for the ones from mjc, where I should try moving around my PCI USB card. This I am going to try over the weekend.

I do not have Kazza installed and I've tried adjusting the resolutions and changing the priority above normal with the different players...no success.

I have tried clean X, which did remove some adware but the problem still exist. Inka, no luck with Cyberlinks PowerDVD the problem still exists.

I'm hoping the option I'm going to try on week-end will work and put an end to my troubles.

[mjc]

For the time being I would just remove it...try a test boot and then if there is an improvement and you absolutely need it, play pci card shuffle.

[BobbySox]

possibly download a new codec to display the video... what type of file is this you are playing?

[greyeagle64]

Guys, I've figured it out! Thanks to all your support, ideas and suggestions. There was not a need to shuffle my PCI cards, the problem was staring me right in my face and I could not see it.
The problem I had was a COMPATIBILITY problem. My sound card driver was not digitally signed for XP and that was messing up my viewing of videos. I uninstalled my original driver that came with my machine and downloaded an updated version from Sound Blaster website, installed it and BINGO! the problem was gone.

Again, thanks for everything guys, I really do appreciate it and keep up the good works.

greyeagle64