Video plays back slowly, audio at correct speed, leading to stutter

[DPolwarth]

Hello,

This is a strange conundrum I've got, and frankly I need the very best. So I've come to you guys.

The video files in my video games (legally owned) 'stutter'. These are the video files that play on starting the game, the intros and other stuff. What actually happens is that the video is playing back slowly, whereas the sound is playing at the correct speed. This leads to the sound stuttering whilst waiting for the video image to 'catch up.'

This has only just started happening to me. I have tried reinstalling the codecs and have even reinstalled Windows media player 11 beta in the hope that had something to do with it. But nothing I've tried has had much effect.

The games I know it definitely causes trouble with are the only ones I've played - Battlefield 2142 demo, oblivion and Gothic 3. I know for a fact that Oblivion uses .bik files.

Does anyone have any idea how I can resolve this issue?

Thanks,

Dan

[dbloom]

Don't bother messing with your codecs or windows media player.

BIK files are Bink files which is a compression format that some company sells for video games. The decompresser is "built into" the game.

[foxyshadis]

Have you tried mplayer/MPUI? That's the only one I know of that has splitters and decoders for a variety of video game formats, that actually works most of the time. Otherwise you should get the standalone bink player (http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm).

[DPolwarth]

I've actually reinstalled the Bink player, but as you suggested it doesn't seem to work.

I wonder what it could be? I've recently upgraded my processor, but surely that wouldn't have had an effect would it?

[dbloom]

It shouldn't. Bink can run on a VERY slow processor (it can run in realtime on a Playstation 2 without using any hardware assisted decoding!). So basically Bink should not be very processor-dependent.

What about your video and sound drivers? Did you upgrade them recently?

[DPolwarth]

Now you come to mention it, I did upgrade to the latest NVIDIA drivers recently. I seem to recall downloading some a few days ago. Do you think that may be the problem? Perhaps Ill take a look at the website and see if anyone is reporting any trouble. I'll let you know what I find out ...

[DPolwarth]

No, it wasn't graphics drivers I installed - the latest ones came out in september, so I suspect I have them already. I will reinstall the drivers though to make sure that there is nothing missing or damaged.

What else could cause a standalone player such as blink to go haywire? It doesn't seem to make any sense.

[DPolwarth]

No, it wasn't the drivers. I've reinstalled NForce 4 and the graphics drivers to no effect.

I'm throwing it back out to you guys - any ideas?

[dbloom]

Does your harddrive have DMA enabled?

device manager-->ide/atapi controllers/primary ide channel/advanced settings
make sure current transfer mode is not "PIO only"

if you have a sata/raid controller this procedure can vary. for my cheapo onboard silicon image SATA RAID controller, i go into device manager, "SCSI and RAID controllers", then in teh device info tab I look under "Current Transfer Mode".

sometimes windows can mess up and switch out of DMA mode. this will make a lot of things act strangely (and slowly), such as skipping audio and maybe your problem as well.

[DPolwarth]

I've followed your advice and checked for DMA mode being disabled, but could not find the option to switch DMA off. I have to assume that it is on.

The disks do not appear to be running slow. I should point out that all the games I have tested on run the video from the hard drive, and not the DVD player. Could this be a clue?

I have sent an email to the people who make the blink player, but I'm not hopeful that they wil respond. The whole thing has me utterly flumoxed.

[DPolwarth]

I found the following information on the FAQ for Binkplayer:

Q: When running on a modern AMD CPU, my video skips - my machine is really fast, why is this happening?

A: There is a bug in the Windows system timer code when running on some AMD CPUs. The easiest way to work around it is to edit your c:\boot.ini file with Notepad, and add the switch "/usepmtimer" (without the quotes) onto the end of the Windows lines under the [operating systems] section, and then reboot.

Do you think this has anything to do with my situation? I thought that windows xp does not use a boot.ini file anymore. But could it be that there is a problem in windows over the new CPU?

Any ideas?

[DPolwarth]

CRACKED IT!

This is possibly quite important for you guys, as it involves a problem with AMD CPUs. The last post I put up from the FAQ gave the cause of the problem and the solution. Essentially, you must add the /usepmtimer in the boot.ini file when using recent AMD CPUs. Otherwise the video will play more slowly than the audio.

Obviously this is useful to know if you are working with video in any way. You might even want to put a sticky note up about this for the time being until microsoft fix the error, as it is sure to be something that other people are experiencing.

I don't know if it only affects .bik files; but on the off chance, I would make sure that anyone with a modern AMD CPU should add the switch to their boot.ini file if they are going to be using video on their machine.

Hope that helps you guys out there. And thanks for all the help I've had so far - it really makes a difference to have other brains working on a problem when you're really flumoxed by something.

Dan