why divx video sometimes pauses...?

[Joshua Wood]

Hi all...

I've watched a few divxs, and noticed that some play fine the whole way thru, while others I find the video to freeze, while the sound continues on. If I move the slider a little bit in front of where the video freezes, normally the video will then continue on all ok.

I'm wondering why. I use media player 6.4...is it the player not reading the divx correctly? Or is it perhaps because the divx is not "complete" eg, during a download it had to stop and resume, and the resume did not work correctly...hence it loses the video stream...(however, why then would the sound work fine?)

It's just more of a nusiance than anything - I can watch the whole divx fine if I use the work around mentioned.

Any comments/suggestions/help appreciated.

Cheers,
Josh

[Yusaku]

most probably this is a CPU issue - some new releases require 1GHz+ processors to play smoothly. Also could be the speed of the harddrive (my external USB drive sometimes has hard time at the beginning of the movie, before all buffers get filled)


Edit: Or, of course, it could be damaged file - open virtualdub and do scan for damaged frames... or use DivXFix or upgrade from that old 3.11a you're using (since that is the only DivX that used to freeze this way)

[Joshua Wood]

Cheers,

I'll try those fixes. I have an Athlon 1 Ghz, and a Seagate Barracuda 4 80GB drive, 7200RPM...so it should be sweet enough. I'll also try divx 5, but I suspect a damaged file. Too bad I've already burnt them to cd :) I can live with it, but I'll try those fixes for any future problems.

[valent]

Did you try to turn "smooth playback" off in the decoder settings?

[trodas]

Why smooth playback is good to turn off? :rolleyes:

Tought it work work on crappy XP winblows, its basicaly on my W2k usefull feature - just a another buffer and that cant harm a thing, do it...? :rolleyes:

[OvERaCiD23]

i believe smooth playback is meant for slower machines. if i enable it on my comp, i get stuttery playback. i now use ffdshow for playback, less CPU usage, more options = better to me.

[trodas]

I also now use FFD show, but mainly because i then dont need install separately DivX and Xvid codecs, as well, as wait for MS Mediaplayer to DL codecs from net for MP4 MS codecs (ASF and such)...

So, FFD show is a clear winner for me, not mentioning the fact, that i can talk now (thank god!) with the autor and take a look at some issues... ;)

[Yusaku]

smooth playback turns on B-frame decoding. So with it off, you're basically missing half the video images - obviously it helps slower machines (half as much work) but you get ~12fps video... which is not good.

[trodas]

Hopefully, there are not much movies encoded with b-frames anyway :D ;)

...because i not seen any diference ;)

[WorldBook]

If it is a divx 3.11 alpha file, try using the divx anti freeze filter---that solved my freezing problems.



Alternatively, you could lower the resolution/colour depth and use a less resource consuming media player such as BSPLAYER. Also try reducing any post-processing.

Hope this helps :)