impossible slow downs on a fast machine

[Battalion23]

Hey, I have a very nice & "powerfull" notebook, acer travelmate 8204. x1600 with 256mb gddr3...
how come even the smallest video files, divx or avi coded, regular tv episodes of roughly 170mb, plays ok, and when it gets to a high BPS moment (lot of moving, lots of noises, stuff like that) it slows down... sometimes even gets stuck for a couple of seconds...
tried closing everything down , tried minimizing the actual view window, tried different programs (real , windows, blaze ) all with the same results. tried looking for driver updates, scanned the registry for problems, no viruses, no spyware...
this machine can't possibly be having problems running such a simple task smoothly...

 

[Slugbait]

Hmmm...it could be your 5400 RPM drive. I had the same issue with an old TabletPC trying to run The Matrix: Revolutions trailer (the "ultra" size) a few years ago, and my current 2-year-old laptop (with a 7200 RPM drive) plays back that same trailer just fine.

This is just a guess.

 

[s13se]

Is your processor clocking down? I have an Acer aspire notebook and when it clocks down to save power it makes everything sluggish. Try putting everything on maximum performance and use CPUz to double check your CPU speed.

 

[goobernoodles]

I assume you've thought of this, but are you plugged into a power adapter when trying to watch these videos?

 

[pcgeek11]

I have to agree with the above ^^^ CPU scaling down. Set it up for Max power.

pcgeek11

 

[Battalion23]

Everything's on max. checked it plugged in, checked it on battery, both settings are set on maximum cpu, maximum ventilation, max hard drive speed... everything is maxed out. I'll put on a dvd, with action sequences... if it doesn't jump there... well, I'll think about it when I get there.
thanks so far.

 

[oynaz]

Do you have the problem both when playing back from a DVD and from the HDD?

 

[Battalion23]

Okay, checked it, played a dvd , and had no jumps... no slowing down...
only from the HDD. So , I checked out and closed the "Acer gravisense" , which is suppose to stable my HDD , and protect the HDD...
thought maybe that slowed it down, but even when I closed it, it didn't help.
so... what's the route from the HDD to the video card to the screen, that doesn't appear in the same route, only from the DVD ?

 

[Hardlin]

If it plays fine from the DVD but not the HDD then it could be a couple of things.

1) Your HDD is just not fast enough to play it smoothly (most notebooks come with slow HDD)
2) The player is different and decoding things differently (then could be memory or proc speed issues - doubt this one though)

I bet the problem is the HDD speed but if you are using two different players, then try it with the same player (if possible).

To answer your question, the only difference in the path should be player/decoder handling the playback.

 

[MobiusPizza]

Could be driver problem, codec corruption
Try remove all codecs and install only ffdshow

DVD uses a much simpler codec, MPEG2 can run smoothly on a slow computer
DivX, Xvid, etc are much more resources intensive in the CPU department. I doubt it's the HDD because the bandwidth of such a highly compressed video needed is very small

 

[Battalion23]

I'll check out those things, thanks.

the thing is, I bought the most powerful laptop I could find ... in my price range, and everyone said it's overkill, and now it doesn't even plays simple 20 minute avi's without slowing down in the "high bitrate" parts ...
don't believe it's the HDD speed, it's standard 5400, most notebooks have it, and I don't think anyone has these problems, it simply means you can't watch a video on your notebook without it slowing down and jumping in high quality frames...
driver problems? don't get me started. I'm enjoying this notebook, but I would have enjoyed it so much more if acer could actually help customers....

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Battalion23
I'll check out those things, thanks.

the thing is, I bought the most powerful laptop I could find ... in my price range, and everyone said it's overkill, and now it doesn't even plays simple 20 minute avi's without slowing down in the "high bitrate" parts ...
don't believe it's the HDD speed, it's standard 5400, most notebooks have it, and I don't think anyone has these problems, it simply means you can't watch a video on your notebook without it slowing down and jumping in high quality frames...
driver problems? don't get me started. I'm enjoying this notebook, but I would have enjoyed it so much more if acer could actually help customers....

It's not your hard drive's speed. Even a 5400RPM drive, while "slow" by some standards, can easily push 20-30MBps sustained, and most video files (even 1080p HD streams) are only a fraction of that. Not to mention that any but the most brain-dead player will buffer the video in RAM so that a few milliseconds of HD delay doesn't make it stutter during playback.

I would guess some sort of problem with your video codecs, or video drivers.

Also, it could be a problem with the particular file/files you're trying to view.