Thanks. The issue was odd enough that I almost didn't post in the first place. If it can be fixed in VLC, great. If not, it's at least out there for the next person who asks the question.
With respect to settings, most of these encodings are from 2008 so I'm not really sure what settings I was using. My recent encodings are fine, I've just got quite a few that used to play and no longer play. That's the part that has me perplexed. At that point in time, there was less on the GUI and ...
Is there are short sample file you could share us? Absolutely. I used Avidemux and chopped out a minute and a half clip out of Back to the Future. It's about 16Mb but clearly demonstrates the problem. With VLC 0.8.6d, it's smooth. 1.0.5 and on, it's really jerky. I stuck the file on my personal sit...
Tried VLC1.1.0-pre3-20100502-1255. It's either the same or worse than 1.0.5.
I'm thinking about trying to compare the level 2 debug messages between clips that play well and ones that don't. Not sure if that will reveal anything interesting or not.
I've been Googling this on and off for awhile and have quickly scanned through past posts looking for an answer but have come up empty. I've got a number of videos that I encoded using Handbrake in 2008 (X264 in MP4 container) that played perfectly in VLC 0.8.6d but have unwatchable jerky video in 1...