audio drops when I use other programs

[andrew corrigan]

specs: latest version of vlc media player, windows xp pro, a pentium 4 cpu (vlc takes up at most 2% of my cpu at any given time according to task manager)

I listen to mp3 files burned onto a cdrom (transferring the files to the hard drive is not permitted here) in vlc media player while working. The audio often skips when performing other tasks in windows:

Examples:
1. When I view pdf or doc files the audio skips if I scroll down the page.
2. When I compile code.
3. When I open and close large or small application (the bigger the program, the more significant the skipping)
4. When I click the Windows start button there is skipping

I'm sure it happens other times but those are just some examples I can think of off the top of my head.

I would expect this to be a commonly encountered problem, but the solution to the audio problem at the top of the page didn't help, I also saw another thread on audio dropping, but didn't find a solution there.

Playing the same files in microsoft's window media player and doing these tasks results in NO skipping. I also tried moving the files off of the cd and onto the hard drive, which diminished the skipping, but it is still there.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[xtophe]

Go in setting/preferences/advanced/others and select "increase the priority of the process"

If it's not good enough, open the Task manager (ctrl+alt+suppr) and in the Processes tab rigth click on vlc.exe and increase the priority.

It can also be some DMA settings for your CD drive. (but don't where it is on win)

hth

[zcot]

increase the process priority..

I think by default wmp uses an unusually high amount of priority..

[edit]
haha.. posted at the same time.. yea, what xtophe said

yes, if you think about it, playing pretty much any media is considered a real-time operation but vlc doesn't automatically take a cpu hogging posture by default..

(excellent problem statement by the way andrew )

[The DJ]

Also remember that compared to the HD, a CD has a very slow response time. VLC uses very small buffers. If they run out before new data can be retrieved, you get hickups. So increasing the cdda module cache should maybe get you somewhere as well.

[andrew corrigan]

Thanks!

Increasing the priority via preferences didn't really help, but setting to the process to real-time in windows task manager did the trick. That's very inconvenient to do that every time I open the program though.

[andrew corrigan]

Also remember that compared to the HD, a CD has a very slow response time. VLC uses very small buffers. If they run out before new data can be retrieved, you get hickups. So increasing the cdda module cache should maybe get you somewhere as well.

I bypassed that problem (temporarily) by copying a file to the hard drive and playing the copy. Scrolling through a pdf file still resulted in lots of skipping.

[The DJ]

Note that setting VLC to realtime might result in your Windows becoming unresponsive in case VLC might run into a serious error.