Video lags every 20-30 seconds

[panicbutton]

Hello.

I am having a small problem with video playback. I noticed it for the first time last week. I don't remember exactly, but I think it was after installing a windows update for directx 9b. But I was also having some adware problems for the first time in months (which I recently took care of).

The basic problem is that when I'm playing a movie, the video lags every 20 to 30 seconds. It'll suddenly slow down and then skip to quickly catch up with the audio. It's only a second long glitch but its quite annoying, quite often, and it just bothers me that its happening when it shouldn't be.

It happens with no matter what sort of file (avi, mpeg, wmv, mov, etc), and no matter what video player (wmp, winamp, quicktime, realplayer).

To try fixing this problem I've updated my latest video card driver and critical windows updates, got rid of every trace of spyware, virus scanned, downgraded back to directx 8.1 with a directx downgrade program, upgraded back to directx 9a, rolled back to my previous video card driver, installed a program called "reclock" that someone told me might help, and went through a number of codecs, which eventually just screwed up the video even more, causing me to use system restore. Unfortunately, however, I cannot use system restore to go back before the lagging problem.


Here are my specs if needed:

HP Pavilion 7955 with mx70 monitor
nVIDIA Riva TNT 2 Model 64/Mode 64 Pro w/ 32MB SDRAM
Windows XP Home - SP 1
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 1500MHz
1.49 GHz
384 MB of RAM
40 GB Harddrive


I'd appreciate any help. Thanks much.

[kitty]

Does Task Manager show any activity during the dropouts? Looks like the spyware/adware might still be there?

[panicbutton]

The spyware is completely gone. I used spysweeper and hijackthis with the help of another forum. Have had no trouble since, and not one pop-up in two weeks. Spysweeper runs in the background to keep things out.

Is there anything else it could be? What about my video codecs?

[Suntan]

kitty asks a good question. Does the performance tab of your Task manager peg out at 100 CPU untilization during the lags and drop to less than 100% during the smooth parts? If so then it means that something is periodically using CPU time during the playing of your video. If it doesn't then something else is causing the slowdown (buffer running out of data, etc.)

Are you playing back from a CD/DVD drive or from the hardrive?

Does it still lag if you try to play it back with VLC? If it is smooth then it is probably somthing to do with your directshow codecs/directX, if it is choppy it is probably a more systemwide problem.

Last resort would be to try playing it with GeeXboX. If it slows down with that then you have hardware problems.

-Suntan

[panicbutton]

Ok, the video plays the same in VLC as it does in any other player. It has that constant lagging. Also, I'm playing the files from my harddrive, not a DVD/CD rom drive.

The answer to the first question is yes. The CPU jumps to 90% or above during a skip but stays between 25 and 50 during smooth play. What should I do about this?

[Suntan]

Does the computer do these spikes in activity during normal operation, or just during playback? Leave task monitor open during webserfing and other stuff and see if you get these spikes.

It sure sounds like some sort of other program opperating and taking cecles when it shouldn't (read: malware)

Click over to the processes tab and see which process is eating up the CPU cycles when this happens. Note all the processes that show CPU usage of more than zero and Google each one to see what they are used for. This can sometimes uncover worms/spyware that Norton, Spybot and the like can not detect. Just make sure to check multiple sites as some people put completely incorrect data out about processes (either out of incompetence or malice) Wouldn't hurt to post a snapshot of your open processes here as well.

-Suntan

[panicbutton]

Alright, I think I'm ok.

First of all, I defragmented my system last night which is something I haven't done in over a year. It took out a LOT of red lines when comparing the "history bar" to the "after defrag" bar. Just from that alone the video seemed to run smoother and skip less severely.

However, I did what you said and watched the processes in my task manager during video playback. Whenever the CPU peeked, it was because of a random burst of CPU from Spysweeper. And now that I think of it, I had upgraded to the latest version of spysweeper just around the time all of the video lagging started.

When I close spysweeper during video playback everything seems to be much better. Although I didn't sit through a whole movie yet, I'm assuming this was the problem. Thanks alot for all of your help.


One more quick question: How do I permanently rid msmsgs.exe from my processes tab? I don't even use msn... and even when i delete it from task manager, it comes back on its own.


Thanks again.

[Suntan]

Ah yes, my old nemsis MSN Messenger...

The first thing I did after installing XP was vow holy war on that little shitting bobble head icon that just would not die!!

(...calms down and stops shouting curse words at M$...)

Anyway, You can find on the internet info that says to go into a certain file and add a text string somewhere which will add msn messenger to the options list under "Add/Remove Windows Components" but that never worked for me.

The easiest thing is to open C:\Program Files scroll down to MSN Messenger and delete that folder. You will no longer be able to use MSN Messenger, but it will not bother you anymore. Unless you have MSN Dialup for an ISP, then the **** suckers will automatically download MSN Messenger and re-install it on your computer! To get around this you need to switch to using DUN (Dial Up Networking) to connect to MSN (which you should do anyway as MSN Explorer is a piece of crap.)

To set up DUN for MSN Dialup go into internet connection settings and setup a new dialup account. Where it asks for the username enter everything inside the quotes except with your real username "MSN/username". Then use that to connect to the internet and setup Outlook and IE (or better yet Thunderbird and Firefox) to serve for your email and browser. If you can't get DUN working search M$'s website for something like "MSN windows 2000" as windows 2000 won't run MSN Explorer so they explain how to get DUN working, but it works the same for XP as well.

-Suntan

[skru_fase]

hi everyone,

i am having a problem similar to this, but i think it may be related to codecs. first off, when i play a mpeg-1 file (say it is 5 min long) only a small portion will be recognized by media player (or any other player for that matter). it will play that portion, then the video stops, but the audio keeps going. if i let it keep playing, every once and a while the video will play for a short duration.

i have uninstalled and re-installed all my codecs. gspot says that i have the necessary codec (mpeg-1) and that its working fine, but it still doesnt play properly.

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. ... i'm at a loss

thanks in advance

[bugster]

1) If you have a question, start a new topic. Do not hijack other posters threads with your questions even if they are similiar. 2 Posts and 2 thread hijacks is not bad going

2) To actually try and answer your question, it is likley that your mpeg is corrupted in some way. See if you can play a commercial DVD movie. If you can, it is not a codec problem, but a source file problem.

[skru_fase]

bugster, i wasn't trying to hijack the thread, the problems may be related, and i didn't want to start another post for that reason. either way, my bad i guess...

with regards your comment, i can play commercial dvd's, but i don't think that necessarily means it's a file problem. reason being it has happened to all my larger mpeg-1 files, not just one. i don't see how they could all be corrupted for no apparent reason. i thought that since it seems to be related to files of greater length, it might have something to do w some kind of buffer for video??? i don't really understand the workings of video playback though so i don't know if that makes any sense.

again, any insight is greatly appreciated...

[bugster]

Something to try.

Get TmpGenc (if you havn;t already) and use the mpeg tools to de-multiplex and then re-multiplex on of your problem files. See if that fixes the problem.

[skru_fase]

bugster,

i tried that, it seemed to help a bit, but it still doesnt play the full file. i tried two different files, both improved moderately in length. it's strange, originally, even though it only showed the file as 1 min long vs 10min (which it actually was), if i used the scroll bar, i could see the later video, so it is there, it just isn't recognized.?

any other suggestions? if it possible that a virus somehow corrupted the files?

[bugster]

The only other thing that comes to mind is Rejig (or maybe Video Redo). I have not used either tool myself but have seen them mentioned many times on these forums. On or the other may help fix your mpegs.

[skru_fase]

i have found a media player that plays my files. the player at www.videolan.org seems to have solved my problem. i am sure it is not a file problem bc i was able to burn a dvd of my files and play them elsewhere.. not sure what the problem acutally was, but at least i can play my files now...

thanks for the suggestions bugster

[Suntan]

Sounds like you have something borked with your setup of Directshow. If VLC (not based on Directshow) plays them fine, but Directshow based players don't then that would be a good indication. Sorry I am at a loss after that.

-Suntan

[BJ_M]

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