Hardware

Ask something
Question Locked

Jerky video playback in Win XP

0 helpful
12 replies

by neil.chinneck

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I'm experiencing jerky video playback on my XP system whenever there is some other system activity e.g. selecting/renaming/deleting files, opening web pages or programs (even tiny ones). Typing (i.e. typing this is OK) but anything that seems to access the HDD seems to cause problems. The audio is uninterrupted and once the access stops the video resumes OK. The video plays back fine with no other activity happening.

All my files and system stuff are on the same disc although partitioned into system/data partitions. I've got the latest drivers for the Radeon 9550 and for my Nforce 2 Asus MB - I even tried rolling back to the standard MS IDE driver as I'd heard this could cause problems.

The PC has not always done this - its started fairly recently and I've a feeling its linked to the Radeon (which is fairly new too) but it seems more like a hard disk issue - I'm not sure on the model but its a 7200 Seagate 160gb i think and its been fine in the past. The issue occurs in all media players I have tried.

Any clues?

thanks

Neil

12 replies

by older mycroft

I've ALWAYS had 'video jerk' when the video source is common with other disk activities.

A second hard drive, housing the video files would create a read/write head that could work independently of the heads required for 'selecting/renaming/deleting files'.

It certainly worked for my system.

by oh smeg

As you have several Partitions on the one HDD you are asking it to work harder than if it just had the 1 partition because it only has the one set of heads they are not capable of doing several things at once.

While it may be easier to organise the partitions you have no redundancy built in and are forcing the HDD to work harder than it needs to. Adding another HDD and running your Video Files from there or at the very least using a different HDD to store whatever and then set it to do whatever is required will be reducing the workload of the HDD and leave things available for other purposes.

by thumbsup2

I agree with the previous posts. In addition to making the hard drive work harder, thereby using more system resources, if you don't defragment the files on a REGULAR basis, the hard drive has to work even harder to find all of the pieces to put a file back together to either read it or write it back to the hard drive.

DEFRAG regularly... at least weekly.

by neil.chinneck

Thanks for your help...I kind of thought that using another HDD would help - I just don't remember this jerking ever really happening to the same extent until quite recently but maybe I'm just looking back through rose-tinted glasses!

I would have thought my PC would be able to cope with video playback and some light disc access at the same time without jerking - its not that old! but hey-ho, another HDD it is.

thanks again

neil

by jdclyde

First, clear your temp directory regularly.

Second, run your spyware scanner for recent malware.

Both of these would account for a "recent" start of this problem.

by absolutely

A second hard drive on the same system provides only marginal improvement, in my experience with an ATI x800. What made a bigger difference was storing video (and audio) files on a Linux file server. I don't claim that Linux is the difference here; I actually think the difference is NorthBridge vs. SouthBridge: video & IDE are both on the NorthBridge, while the network controller is on the South, IIRC. So streaming the same video content over the network ends up smoother, because the video does not compete with the hard drives and system processes for bandwidth.

by neil.chinneck

..I've tried playing videos from an external USB2 hdd and I'm still getting the same problem i.e. when I start doing something else it gets jerky. If I'm typing or just viewing something (like a webpage) i.e. some activity that isn't immediately accessing the main HDD then its fine but If I copy a file, or drag select over a series of files, do some renaming in iTunes etc it starts to get jerky. Once activity stops the video returns to normal.

Could it possibly be due to me using the onboard LAN? I used to use a wireless card until recently so maybe using the onboard LAN has had an adverse effect on system performance?

Thanks for the tips

Neil

by older mycroft

I only ask because I am at a loss to understand how you can be doing these 'other' things while watching a video file.

eg - 1 eye on the keyboard while renaming files AND the other eye watching the video, otherwise how can you tell that it's jerky??? :D

by neil.chinneck

I tend to watch video while doing other things on the pc, thats all. Pretty boring stuff like sorting out files etc which doesn't need much concentration but which means lots of disc access. In truth, your right, the jerky-ness isn't that troublesome but its annoying because i know it never used to be this bad!

by oh smeg

on USB and Internal HDD's but the whole idea just seemed too silly for words.

You insist on watching Video from the slowest Data Transfer Medium Possible and still expect it to work properly, The whole idea just doesn't make any sense so I left it alone.

Col

by neil.chinneck

That surprises me...I know USB2 isn't as fast as an ATA100/133 HDD but wouldn't 30-40MB/s be enough to stream video smoothly?

It seems that the benefits of having the video on a separate HDD are outweighed by the slower transfer speed, which only decreases with higer-system activity.

oh well,

thanks for all the suggestions. I think I'll try listening to music instead while I'm working!

This discussion is closed to new replies.