Framerate slows to a crawl!

[Slabz]

Hi...Apologies up-front if this is the wrong forum for this...

I have been having problems with playback of DivX and XviD video...I even did a clean reinstall of XP, but it did not help. Once upon a time, I had no problems at all with any of these videos, but now, it's screwed. I have DirectX 9.0c (courtesy of GTA:San Andreas) installed. I run a P4 2.4, 512mb RAM on a Dell Inspiron 1100 (quit laughing!)

Regardless of media player, playback *sometimes* works without problem, but much of the time, my video will play for a minute or so, and then gradually slow down to a crawl (5 fps or so)...I show loads of jitter and loads of sync offset (although I'm not really sure what that is) when I check the properties/statistics...

Skipping around the timeline doesn't help either. I've noticed that wmplayer freaks out a lot, where it will be closed, yet still be present in the task manager process list (showing 0 cpu)...When I play back video, it maxes out the processor.

But like I said, the framerate problem happens with BSplayer, Mplayer Classic, and WMP 10...

Any help would be SO appreciated...Me needs me pr0n! ;)

Thanks,
Slabz

[Slabz]

Just cos I know you all like to know about the versions etc:

I've got DivX decoder 5.1.1, Xvid 1.0, AC3, and OGG codecs installed. They were installed chronologically in that order, as well.

Thanks

[CWR03]

By any chance do you also have ffdshow installed? The only time I've ever had that particular problem (and I run a media PC that's worse off than your Dell, so I'm not laughing) was when I had forgotten to disable the "Grab," and only realized it when my drive suddenly became full while I was trying to view a jerky video. 300,000 deleted photo's later and all was well.

[setarip_old]

Hi!

You might want to check to see if your system is overheating...

[jggimi]

Good guess, but this was posted in the wrong forum. I'm moving it to our HW/SW forum, which is more appropriate, for you.

[check]

OGG codecs? you don't mean oggds do you? I've never heard of that causing anything like this but it's not a very good splitter anyway, I'd suggest you try the CCCP as an codec solution. Uninstall divx/xvid/ogg codecs and install the CCCP.

btw, divx and xvid perform the same functions when decoding, simply set one to decode all MPEG4 videos and you only need one of them.

[Slabz]

Hey, thanks to all for your replies....I'm not sure if the PC is overheating, (it's a laptop) and it is on all the time and does get quite hot....but I didn't really have this problem before, and the pc was on just as much....How can I check the temperature of the guts?

It's weird...I notice that WMP is completely tripping out, as do all my other media players...It uses ALL remaining CPU power, and just maxes out....

I uninstalled xvid and divx and am only using the ffdshow...grab is off, postprocessing is off....

I had installed Nero Ultimate Platinum DingDing Bells and Whistles crap, and I have moved the Nero audio and video .ax files out and wiped their registry entries, but that hasn't fixed it either.....

This is weird.....

[rumpleforeskin]

I had this problem, not sure why but FFD was the cause. i disabled the DIVX playback in FFD and used the divx decoder. not the greatest solution but it worked. then when a later build of FFD was released everything was fine.

Weird because i never had trouble with FFD to start with... oh well

[setarip_old]

I'm not sure if the PC is overheating, (it's a laptop) and it is on all the time and does get quite hot....but I didn't really have this problem before, and the pc was on just as muchOver time, your system may have accumulated dust and grit, so that your problem has gotten progressively more pronounced.

First, try shutting it down for several hours. see if the problem "goes away" for any period of time.

One other small thing you can try (before thinking of having the laptop opened up for cleaning) is to raise the laptop off whatever surface it's on, so you can possibly provide a little more ventilation...

[CWR03]

One other small thing you can try (before thinking of having the laptop opened up for cleaning) is to raise the laptop off whatever surface it's on, so you can possibly provide a little more ventilation...
You may also try blowing air into and under the laptop to help cool it. The "cool down" test is a good one - if it works fine until it heats up, you know where the problem is. It's even possible that its internal fan has failed.

[Slabz]

I blew into the vents, and all that...Seems to be ok for now, but it's strange, now that I think about it, I haven't heard the fan blowing like wild like it has before...Perhaps it has failed! I'm going to see if I can check out the fan settings and see if it's working....

Thanks again!

[Blue_MiSfit]

Negative. This is in fact a good sign! It means that the fan isn't desperately trying to vent hot air through clogged vents and failing miserably

It can now get away with low speed operation (as it should)!

I have seen this so many times it's not even funny! Sometimes the heat sinks get so clogged that even compressed air won't work, and you have to gut the machine, remove the heatpipe and fans, and then disassemble that unit and clean it manually, extracting the gigantic deadly dust bunnies of doom!

You're lucky, sometimes the heat buildup caused by bad ventilation with laptops will slow cook the motherboard, damaging capactiors and leading to flaky intermitent motherboard issues. It is SO important to keeep a laptop's cooling system clean!!!

Glad your problem is taken care of! Keep a can of dust-off at hand!

~MiSfit

[Sx66gns]

it's nice to see a tech forum with some folks that actually know what thier talking about , nice solution to a very common issue.