Help! Having Playback Issues

[dionys1]

Hi,

I've been using VideoLan VLC player and Windows Media Player for all of my video and audio,but am recently having problems with the video during playback.

The picture stutters and does not play in a continuous manner. Originally,this only happened to clips that were downloaded from the internet. Now, all video,including dvd's inserted into the dvd drive are playing the same way.

I have a Dell xps t609x, but it was given to me and I don't know what kind of video card there is. I am running windows xp with the media player. I have only begun having problems within the last few weeks.

Any ideas?

[redwudz]

Do they play the same running from your hard drive? If not, maybe it's a player problem. Also, you might have something in your video card settings that's not right.

You should be able to go to the Dell site and get some info about that computer. I'm assuming it's a laptop?
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/product_support/en/product_...mily=XPS&s=gen

You might also check to see if they have updated drivers available, in case it's a driver problem.

If it's the player, you might check to see if the drive has reverted to PIO mode:

To check DMA/PIO mode within Windows:

Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager>IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.

From there, right click on one of the channels and choose 'Properties>Advanced Settings'. All drives should be DMA mode. The 'Current Transfer Mode' for Hard drives is usually DMA 4-6 and DVD burners DMA 2-4, DVD ROMs usually DMA 2. If you see any in PIO mode, that can slow things down.

Changing them back may be easy or complicated. First see if you can change them in that window. If not, I usually uninstall the channel the drive is on and let the OS reinstall it. This will usually take a reboot and it should correct the DMA settings. If not, see if they can be changed manually. This will not damage any files on the computer.

And welcome to our forums.

[dionys1]

Thanks for your assistance!

I'll check those things out.