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I'm trying to run a 1080p AVI using the following specs: E8400@3Ghz, 285GTX@Stock, 4GB Ram. Even after seeing people with much weaker system playing 1080p without stutter at all I can't seem to be able to run it smoothly.
PS: I tried in VLC and Mplayer
What can I do to play it smoothly?

EDIT: the OS is Vista Ultimate 32bit, and the video drivers are updated.

GZaidman
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  • Though it's not mentioned above, can it be assumed that you are outputting to a display with at least 1080p resolution? I've tried playing 720p video on a smaller display... the results sound very similar to what you are saying there. – Aeo Jan 12 '11 at 15:12
  • @Aeo interesting, I'm trying to output to a display with a resolution of 1680 X 1050. Could this be the problem? – GZaidman Jan 12 '11 at 15:35
  • @GZaldman Very likely. That was the problem with mine, I don't see why not with yours... You could try converting the video to a lower resolution, mayhaps, and see if that plays right. – Aeo Jan 12 '11 at 15:37
  • @Aeo Thanks, I'll try that. Any recommended software? – GZaidman Jan 12 '11 at 15:43
  • @GZaldman Not really... I was lucky enough at the time to know someone with access to Adobe's video editing offerings and they converted it. You might look at ffmpeg, but I don't know if it can change resolutions or not... – Aeo Jan 12 '11 at 15:51
  • Sounds like your video is being software rendered and not hardware. – Brad Jan 12 '11 at 15:52
  • @Brad Really? How would you check that? If that was my issue, I'll just have to kick myself! lol – Aeo Jan 12 '11 at 16:03
  • @Aeo, The easiest way to check is to play a video and take a screenshot (Push printscreen on your keyboard, then paste into paint or something.) If the rendering is being passed to the graphics card, then you will see just black where the video is supposed to be. If you see a video frame, then it is being rendered via software, which even on your machine, may cause issues. Now, how to fix it I don't know... I have this same problem on one of my cards. – Brad Jan 12 '11 at 18:46
  • On another note, your card won't render everything. Usually MPEG-4 and MPEG-2, and that's about it. If you have a really odd codec, it will likely always be software rendered. What codec is this video? – Brad Jan 12 '11 at 18:48
  • @Brad AVI.... and according to the test you suggested, it's software-rendered (both on VLC and mplayer). Forcing mplayer to use 2 cores instead of one made both cores to run at 20% approx, but the video still stuttered. – GZaidman Jan 12 '11 at 23:01
  • AVI isn't the codec, that's the file format. AVI can contain just about any codec. In VLC, click Tools -> Codec Information. Anything software rendered will have trouble. Just because it isn't eating your whole CPU doesn't mean it is uniformly dumping the data to the buffer in time. These kinds of things are very visible. On my machine, it looks like page flipping.... part of the frame is updated in time and other part is updated on the next cycle. – Brad Jan 12 '11 at 23:12
  • @Brad Yeah I was about to fix that: the codec is MPEG4. – GZaidman Jan 12 '11 at 23:15
  • Go into the VLC Preferences, under video, and make sure you are using accelerated video output. Try experimenting with the different output options... try DirectX Video Output and others. – Brad Jan 13 '11 at 00:30
  • @Brad Tried every output settings (with and without GPU acceleration), still stuttering.... – GZaidman Jan 13 '11 at 09:30

3 Answers3

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Most definitely a software issue. Your hardware is more than capable of playing 1080p video. As you said, much lower systems are able to perform 1080p playback.

A few things to try:

  • Are you video drivers installed and up to date?
  • Have you tried other 1080p videos? Could be a problem with the video itself. Try other videos and also try the same video on other machines
  • Are you running any other resource heavy applications or services during the video playback? Check this by using your task manager

Also, let us know what operating system and version you are using.

th3dude
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Update your graphics drivers. Disable any active virus/spyware protection. Make sure the media you're playing is on your local disk (and not the network or the Internet). Uninstall VLC (also remove your settings/preferences) and install a fresh copy of the latest stable version.

qJake
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This depends what you mean by stutter.

Your machine is capable of playing it back, I would say this is a software, or more likely, codec issue.

I would download the K-Lite Codecs, available through Ninite, then try playing through Windows Media Player or Mplayer - this should hopefully help things. I am unsure how to use VLC with the codec pack.

William Hilsum
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  • i'd personally recommend CCCP over K-Light, but that's a matter of preference. You can't use VLC with codec packs for most part. – Journeyman Geek Jun 16 '11 at 22:04