I've got a newly built laptop, with a 2.8GHz P4 with 768MB RAM and XP SP2. I installed VLC while building the system, and it played back my MP4 files recorded with my Sanyo HD1 camcorder beautifully -- it only used about 50% of the CPU for the HiDef 1280x720@30fps video and almost never dropped a frame. I was quite pleased.
Then things went to hell...
Stoopid XP lost the DMA setting on the harddrive. I started dropping frames. Blecch. I found this fairly quickly (whenever I used to lose frames on my old 1.4GHz Athlon laptop, it was pretty obvious to me what was going on, and I got to the point where I frequently checked my IDE driver whenever I saw a performance problem). So, I unloaded the IDE driver, reloaded it, and disk I/O improved.
However, VLC performance was still in the toilet. I'm losing about 1/3rd of my frames now while sucking up 100% of the CPU on the exact same videos.
Defagged my hard drive. Installed K-Lite Codec Pack v2.8.1. Removed all related components (VLC + KLCP). Windows Updates. Reload VLC + KLCP. Verified with Sherlock and GSpot and VLC that the non-Microsoft codecs were being used.
I rolled back my video drivers to those installed with the original system (removing the updates from MS).
I removed VLC + KLCP. Installed just VLC. Added the older version of KLCP that included the CoreAVC codecs.
Putzed around with all kinds of video settings, both in VLC and KLCP's Media Player Classic.
I've got a 1.8GHz Athlon 64 sitting here, and it's running rings around this laptop, and according to GSpot, both systems are using the exact same codecs all the way through! (Src -> 4cc:MP4V -> ffdshow MPEG-4 -> YV12 -> quartz.dll).
I've scoured this forum and the KLCP forum, and all kinds of FAQs, but I can't find a solution.
I've spent over 8 hours on this problem, and nothing I do seems to have any kind of positive affect on performance.
I'm technical, but video codecs are not my specialty. How can I find out what's causing my performance bottleneck and fix it, without using a debugger???
Wasting my Christmas holiday on video codecs,
Aaron