AVI file will play on HD, choppy on CD ...why??

[Neos]

I have an avi file I made on my Sony Camera. It was mpeg, and I converted it. It plays fine on Media Player from the HD where it is stored.

I made a copy on CD with Nero, and the dang thing is choppy, slow, sound warbles. That is only when I play the file from the CD. When I copy it back from the CD to a second HD (separate from the original) - it plays fine.

Any idea why this is, and what I need to do??

Thanks
Andrew in AL

 

[sswingle]

The cd drive probably can't read the data fast enough, whereas a hard drive can.

Either that, or if you have a really fast drive, it tends to read enough to play the video for a little bit, and then spins down, about the same time media player needs more data, and then it takes time to spin back up again. I had a 52x drive that did this, drove me crazy. Put the disk in my slower drive and it worked great, because the slower drive read the disk constantly.

 

[foofoo]

hi,
have you checked that dma is enabled on your cd drive?
this could be the problem.

 

[lucky9]

What's your drive rated at. Yes, DMA first to check. There's a time to spin down thing somewhere in Win XP that I remember seeing. Can't remember whether it needed adjusting for my drive or not. I use a X LiteOn CDR/RW. Never a prob on a very old system.:music:

 

[Neos]

DMA was one of the first things to check in my thinking - but I have yet to find a check box for that in XP Pro. Maybe someone knows.

Thanks for the replies.

Andrew in AL

 

[Neos]

I found it.
The DMA settings are under the IDE Controller settings in Device Manager. Looks to be all automatic.

I have 98SE loaded on a second partition. I will try it over there and see what happens, and let you know what I find there.

Thanks
A in A

 

[Neos]

OK guys. This be a mystery.

The file will play in 98SE on my Iomega 8x4x32 - will not play on my older 4x Matshita. Before I went to 98SE, I went into the bios and set all my primary and secondary ide's to auto.

All ok - right? Not quite. I go back to XP Pro, and get the same thing - slow, garbled, cutting out - BOTH CD DRIVES.

Where, oh where is the guru that can figure this out?

Thanks again
Andrew in AL

 

[egale]

The problem is your machine. You have an underpowered machine, especially for XP. XP requires a fast processor and lots of memory. 256mb is not enough.

The video plays under 98 because 98 is not resource hungry. When you run XP, the os is already using a lot of your memory and cpu. When you copy it to your hard drive first, you need less resources to play it.

If you upgrade your memory, you probably will help the problem a lot. I have a laptop with XP and 256mb. I can play a dvd without any smoothly only if nothing else is running. I installed a trojan monitor and with that in the background, the DVD could not play smoothly. On my desktop with 1gig, I do not have that problem.

 

[Neos]

Sounds possible/reasonable.

My machine is not that slow, tho. It is a 1 gig (Athlon) with 256K of ram.

I just took the cd to my dads and his Sony XP home laptop plays it fine. Then we tried to play it in his 98SE desktop (800 Mhz. I think) it would not play on the Windows media player. It actually froze up, so I am thinking that he has issues with that machine.

Anyway, we rebooted the SE desktop, and opened Quicktime (his default for that unit) loaded the file, and this time it played fine.

Guess it is machine dependent.

Thanks
Andrew in AL

 

[monzie]

First off 256mb (even pc100 will run vid files OK on xp) of mem is fine for most xp installs.

Do a <CAD> and look at the cpu usage (Processes tab)and more importantly the 'idle process' (how much work the cpu ISNT doing). Ignore the memory column (unless its moving) as that is just an indication of what memory was used last time that service was run...............but some people think its a running constant of memory usage..........then go to the Performance tab and look at the PFUH graph, is it moving? If it is more mem could be required/ or turn off un-needed services (about 35 xp sevices alone).

Secondly what format is the media file now in (audio and video)? Do you have the correct filters/codecs to play it and are they associated with the media player? WMP is (to be blunt) a pile of poo when it comes to playing non MS formats (but you just can't tell some people........they think the sun shines out of M$'s @rse and WMP is doing them a favour....yeh right. WMP9 anyone?).

Media players have a habit of 'grabbing' other codecs installed on a machine (from other media players) to play a file when on the HDD but not from an external source. See below.

Thirdly did Nero burn it as a vcd, svcd. or a data disk (avi, divx, xvid .mov, whatever)?

Four. Copying a file to the HDD is NOT a true image of a CD (unless its an ISO or .bin etc). Its just an interpretation of a CD. Think of how CD/DVD security measures work, otherwise any idiot could copy anything, couldn't they? You could always make an HD image of the CD and mount it in a virtual drive, and see what happens (if it plays fine then its your CD drives).

Five. You've already covered this (CDrom speed/dma modes).

Get back with info on the media file and i'll do my best (or someone else for that matter) to help you with this problem.

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: egale
The problem is your machine. You have an underpowered machine, especially for XP. XP requires a fast processor and lots of memory. 256mb is not enough.

The video plays under 98 because 98 is not resource hungry. When you run XP, the os is already using a lot of your memory and cpu. When you copy it to your hard drive first, you need less resources to play it.

If you upgrade your memory, you probably will help the problem a lot. I have a laptop with XP and 256mb. I can play a dvd without any smoothly only if nothing else is running. I installed a trojan monitor and with that in the background, the DVD could not play smoothly. On my desktop with 1gig, I do not have that problem.

wtf are you on about?

I used to run xp on my p2 400 w/256mb pc100 and it played avi's and dvd's fine.

Get a grip man, some people run xp on K6'2s?!

 

[waitman]

Originally posted by: DannyBoy

Originally posted by: egale
The problem is your machine. You have an underpowered machine, especially for XP. XP requires a fast processor and lots of memory. 256mb is not enough.

The video plays under 98 because 98 is not resource hungry. When you run XP, the os is already using a lot of your memory and cpu. When you copy it to your hard drive first, you need less resources to play it.

If you upgrade your memory, you probably will help the problem a lot. I have a laptop with XP and 256mb. I can play a dvd without any smoothly only if nothing else is running. I installed a trojan monitor and with that in the background, the DVD could not play smoothly. On my desktop with 1gig, I do not have that problem.

wtf are you on about?

I used to run xp on my p2 400 w/256mb pc100 and it played avi's and dvd's fine.

Get a grip man, some people run xp on K6'2s?!

I run a dual boot 98se/xp on a celeron 500 w/256mb pc100, never had a problem with playing videos, knock on wood, yet! xp seems to run much smoother than w98. Interesting dilemna though.

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: waitman

Originally posted by: DannyBoy

Originally posted by: egale
The problem is your machine. You have an underpowered machine, especially for XP. XP requires a fast processor and lots of memory. 256mb is not enough.

The video plays under 98 because 98 is not resource hungry. When you run XP, the os is already using a lot of your memory and cpu. When you copy it to your hard drive first, you need less resources to play it.

If you upgrade your memory, you probably will help the problem a lot. I have a laptop with XP and 256mb. I can play a dvd without any smoothly only if nothing else is running. I installed a trojan monitor and with that in the background, the DVD could not play smoothly. On my desktop with 1gig, I do not have that problem.

wtf are you on about?

I used to run xp on my p2 400 w/256mb pc100 and it played avi's and dvd's fine.

Get a grip man, some people run xp on K6'2s?!

I run a dual boot 98se/xp on a celeron 500 w/256mb pc100, never had a problem with playing videos, knock on wood, yet! xp seems to run much smoother than w98. Interesting dilemna though.

XP will, its NT based, much more reliability, and much newer, better support, more stable etc etc

 

[Neos]

I have yet to do some of the suggestions, but I have an idea what may be happening.

I have an Aureal sound card - that with it's native drivers it does not work well with XP. Does fine in 98SE. Well - I applied a patch and all was really in good shape - until just recently. I am noting that the sound is stuttering at times - so I am thinking that all this may be connected.

I have a spare HD, so I am going to format it and partition it - load 98SE, XP, and space on it, and try again. This time I am going to leave a larger partition for XP. This one is so cramped that I cannot do a defrag or use the restore feature.

I will come back later and post my results. May be a few days.

Take care
Andrew in AL

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: Neos
I have yet to do some of the suggestions, but I have an idea what may be happening.

I have an Aureal sound card - that with it's native drivers it does not work well with XP. Does fine in 98SE. Well - I applied a patch and all was really in good shape - until just recently. I am noting that the sound is stuttering at times - so I am thinking that all this may be connected.

I have a spare HD, so I am going to format it and partition it - load 98SE, XP, and space on it, and try again. This time I am going to leave a larger partition for XP. This one is so cramped that I cannot do a defrag or use the restore feature.

I will come back later and post my results. May be a few days.

Take care
Andrew in AL

Ok see you in a few days, Andrew, from AL...

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: egale
The problem is your machine. You have an underpowered machine, especially for XP. XP requires a fast processor and lots of memory. 256mb is not enough.

The video plays under 98 because 98 is not resource hungry. When you run XP, the os is already using a lot of your memory and cpu. When you copy it to your hard drive first, you need less resources to play it.

If you upgrade your memory, you probably will help the problem a lot. I have a laptop with XP and 256mb. I can play a dvd without any smoothly only if nothing else is running. I installed a trojan monitor and with that in the background, the DVD could not play smoothly. On my desktop with 1gig, I do not have that problem.

Not to beat a dead horse.... but this is plain wrong.

 

[Abhi]

Originally posted by: egale
The problem is your machine. You have an underpowered machine, especially for XP. XP requires a fast processor and lots of memory. 256mb is not enough. The video plays under 98 because 98 is not resource hungry. When you run XP, the os is already using a lot of your memory and cpu. When you copy it to your hard drive first, you need less resources to play it. If you upgrade your memory, you probably will help the problem a lot. I have a laptop with XP and 256mb. I can play a dvd without any smoothly only if nothing else is running. I installed a trojan monitor and with that in the background, the DVD could not play smoothly. On my desktop with 1gig, I do not have that problem.

i am running XP on a P3 450 with 160 MB ram..

Doesnt exactly fly and take 1 and a half minutes to boot, but plays videos and even divx files properly..

 

[Abhi]

Btw.... just a thot...

Try changing your player... as in the file playing software...

Divx files run choppy on my comp (its horrible old and outdated) with Windows Media Player but run fine with the Divx Player.

Its worth a shot...