Updating from 2.0.8 to 2.1.2

[MikeG101]

Good morning everyone,

This is my first time here. I'd like to thank everyone involved in this project. VLC is a great player and I can't imagine the efforts necessary the achieve this. Again thank you.

I would like to share some observations made updating from 2.0.8 to 2.1.2. Now I am only an average to below-average user, so don't throw rocks at me if my observations reveal my level of expertise. I just found out about the VLC message window today so it gives you an idea...If those observations can be usefull to anyone I'll be happy.

Let's start with my laptop:

Asus Eee PC
Intel Atom
CPU N280 @1.66 GHz
2 Go RAM
Windows XP SP3

It's not very powerfull but i'ts been doing the job so far. Now my observations:

-FLAC playback is not stuttering anymore.

For this reason alone I registered today on VideoLan and will go to the "Contribute" page right after this.

-Video Playback seems to be taxing the laptop a little more

I watched an AVI two days ago with 2.0.8 without problems. The same AVI was unwatchable yesterday with 2.1.2. Picture freezing very often (read all the time) and sound would stop and make fire crackling sounds. One interesting fact I think, the same movie can be viewed without problem when viewed within my Firefox web browser which uses the VLC 2.1.0 web plugin.

Today I noticed (thanks to the VLC message window) that my audio equalizer was on. Turning it off brings th CPU usage down by almost 30% which seems to make the difference between unwatchable and watchable for the same AVI.

I will now go back reading on the forum trying to go from below-average to average user...right after I've been on the "Contribute" page as promised above.

Take care,

MG

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Yes, you should change the preferences of the video output to DirectDraw

[anonymouss]

i had also same problem,everthing works fine in upto 2.08 but i had sound problem in firecrackling sound,ie bit by bit sound in 2.1.2 with dfx

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Try to pass the audio preference to integer and not float...

[MikeG101]

Good morning Jean-Baptiste,

Changing to DirectDraw seems to help thanks for the tip.

I mentioned in my previous post that flac playback was now impeccable. One thing I failed to notice was that if I have more than one song in the playlist, between the 2 songs, I hear very short bits of sounds, on and off, for about 1 or 2 seconds, more or so like a CD hanging.

With audio equalizer off the problem disappears.

Now I also tried your 2nd tip above (integer instead of floating). With that setting it seems to solve the problem even with audio equalizer on.

Thanks again,

Mike

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

So, 2.1.2 and DirectDraw and Integer solves all the issues?

[MikeG101]

It seems like it but I haven't had time to test a lot.

I will do more test this weekend and get back to you.

Thanks for taking the time,

Mike

[bernd_b]

I guess "DirectDraw" is windows operating system specific? But what is "pass the audio preference to integer"?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

I guess "DirectDraw" is windows operating system specific? But what is "pass the audio preference to integer"?

Disable the float option in the DirectSound output in advanced preferneces. Both options are Windows specific.