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How To Get Your Streaming Media Movie To Play Properly

If you are having trouble getting your streaming video & audio to play properly off CD-ROM or hard drive (especially if it's a big one like 640X480), then try the following steps to ensure proper playability.

  1. POWERFUL ENOUGH CPU: Make sure your computer is powerful enough. A 640X480 by 15 frames per second AVI Indeo 3.2 movie using PCM (uncompressed) audio will need a minimum of a Pentium 200 MHz to play properly without hesitating or dropping frames. Newer codecs using the same picture size & frame rate will require an even faster computer. An MPEG1 movie at 352X240 by 30 frames per second generally requires at least a Pentium 166 or 200 to play without hesitating or dropping frames.
  2. OLDER MEDIA PLAYER: Try playing the AVI from the old Media Player version 4 called mplay32.exe found in your system32 folder. This player should be already installed on every Windows PC computer in the world, although in earlier versions like Windows 95 it could be installed in the Windows folder & called mplayer.exe.  Version 4 of Media Player will play older codecs like Indeo 3.2 & Cinepak, but may not play most of the newer codecs.
  3. CURRENT WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER: Install the newest version of Windows Media Player for your computer (version 6.4 for Windows NT & 95, or version 7.1 for 98, ME & 2000) to see if this newer player makes any difference. You can get it at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/Download/default.aspExternal link   Be warned however that Windows Media Player version 7 (for Windows 98, ME & 2000) seems to take significantly more CPU resources than version 6.4 (which is also installed on your computer). To locate Windows Media Player version 6.4 in Windows Explorer or My Computer, look in the partition your operating system is in & menu under Program Files\Windows Media Player & double click on the file called mplay2.exe
  4. TRY THE QUICKTIME PLAYER: If the AVI movie doesn't play well in Windows Media Player, manually open it up in the QuickTime 4 or 5 player to see if it plays without frame skipping. If you don't have this player you can get it at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/supporeExternal link  for QuickTime 4 or at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standaloneExternal link   for QuickTime 5 (note QuickTime 5 may still be a bit buggy at this time).
  5. REAL MEDIA PLAYER: While the Real Player sometimes takes over & attempts to play other codecs like AVI & MPEG1, it is not the best suited player for these codecs. The Real Player is best suited to play Real Media codecs.
  6. VIEW AT 100% SIZE: Make sure the player is playing the movie at exactly 100% of it's native resolution, since it can take extra CPU resources to rescale & smooth the video to any other size. In Windows Media Player this is found by menuing under View/Zoom 100% or by pressing Alt + 2.
  7. USE A FAST CD-ROM PLAYER: Try playing a 1 MB/sec movie back from a fast CD-ROM player that never drops below 8X speed (which means a CD-ROM that's rated for 16X speed). Note that CD-ROM drives seldom achieve the manufacturers speed claim across the entire disc, so conservatively figure on 1/2 to 2/3rds the rated speed as being the minimum speed capability. A 1X speed is about 150 KB/second, so divide 150 into the average data rate of the movie per second to get the minimum speed which the CD-ROM should not fall below.
  8. AVOID PLAYING MOVIE OVER A NETWORK: Make sure that the movie file is on the hard drive of the computer that's playing it & not playing off a network drive of another computer, which can be a bottleneck.
  9. DEFRAGMENT HARD DRIVE: If the movie is a high data rate, it's possible that it's playing from a fragmented hard drive that can't maintain that speed throughout the clip. Try using the basic built in defragmention utility in most operating systems to defragment the hard drive, or move the movie clip to a less fragmented drive partition.
  10. LOWER MONITOR COLORS: In Control Panel/Display, try lowering the graphics card color palette to 65,536 colors from 16,777,216 (24 bit true color). The more memory on the graphics card, the less likely that you will need to do this. This can help particularly for DVD (MPEG2) software playback because it double buffers the video & uses twice as much memory.
  11. CLOSE OTHER PROGRAMS: Don't have other programs open that might be a significant drain on the CPU & RAM resources.
  12. USE TASK MANAGER TO DIAGNOSE RESOURCES BEING USED: In operating systems like Windows NT & 2000 that have a Task Manager CPU graph built in (access by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Delete together & clicking on the performance tab), check to see that the CPU isn't peaking at 100% during playback, that there is enough ram available & that there aren't hidden programs running in the background that are using up needed resources. For those operating systems that don't have something like a Task Manager or other resource in use indicators built in, download & install TaskInfo2000External link .

By Doug Hembruff.
Last updated June 22/2001

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