The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,
Noob to site, but have used VLC for a while.

I can't resolve a long running issue using VLC to play DVDs or DVD ISOs/Video_TS.
This is across 3 WinTel machines running Win 8.1.
Two I3 laptops HD4000/HD5000, and a desktop I5 4 core, with gamer card-GT630.
4 or 6 gigs of ram. All x64.

They all exhibit the same problem. And I tried a lot of tweaking with no luck.
This must be a plain vanilla problem that I just can't pin down.

Symptom: Audio is fine. Video - when playing standard def DVD, or ISO/Video_TS on local HDD or external
I get a sort of "lurching" artifact during playback. It is subtle but really bugs me.
The lurching is really obvious with movies like, '2001:ASO', because the motion in this movie
is normally very smooth and linear. The "lurching" is like a sort of like a very mild, short near-halt, then about 300mS of "catch up".

I tried Media Player Classic-BE in same environment; smooth as silk right out of the box on the same machines and same media
I want VLC to work over MPC-BE for audio reasons.

Any ideas?
Thanks

What do you mean by lurching?

I'm having this subtle stuttering issue also. Tried it on a vintage XP rig all the way to my i7-8700 win10. Other players like Windows Classic Media Player or KODI are buttery smooth on the same hardware.

This is noticeable on panning scenes or where the camera is floating around as in documenting something or giving you an overview of the scene and sets. It hesitates for just an instant, then plays smooth, then repeats. Again this stuttery playback is not present on other players. I'd guess 200ms is the length of the pause, maybe less. Then it's fine uber-smooth for 500ms or so. More or less like a trip-up for want of better terminology.

I suppose the best videos to observe this are camera pans on StarTrek bridge shots. Or a simple scene with a car. Or a flying aerial shot of something. Facial shots or character dialog or high-speed stop-action fighting shots hide this artifact.

I tried this with an ISO "rip" of the DVD and the original disc. Zero difference.

Problem isn't happening because of lack of system power. And I've also played with quite a few of the options and no difference no matter what. No doubt there is an issue. If you can't see it I suggest a side-by-side comparison against MPC-BE or KODI or a real DVD player.

An amateur guess would be something is wrong with frame syncing from the DVD to a computer monitor. Different refresh rates or something. I believe the issue is the source DVD frame rate vs. the PC's monitor refresh rate is the issue here. VLC should, in this day and age, be able to handle this. And have options to tweak this as needed if not done automatically like other players.

I can certainly supply logs and other info but I'm not sure what else they'll reveal compared to what's been periodically posted by others with this problem.

I would prefer to keep using VLC for numerous reasons including familiarity from 10 years ago and whatnot.

Not interested in using that. Cut the spam.

1.0.5 and earlier doesn't exhibit the choppy lurching artifact.

I have exactly the same problem with my ISO rips of DVDs. It's particularly noticeable on panning shots - the motion is jerky.

The same DVD ripped as an mpeg2 within an mkv container (ie NOT recompressed - ripped with makeMKV) is perfectly smooth.

I'm using the latest version of VLS (3.0.11) on a powerful system. Does anyone have a fix/workaround that doesn't involve rolling back to an ancient version or re-ripping my DVDs?

By lurching I mean the image pauses or hesitates for about a 3rd of a second every second or slightly less.