The VideoLAN Forums

I have my DVD's ripped to my computer as .iso files and play them using VLC. I've been doing this for about a year with no problems. For some reason, however, the video has begun to get a bit choppy when the camera pans to the left or right. It's hard to explain, but it's two lines that have inconsistencies with the rest of the screen - it's like they lag a few frames. If the camera does an extensive pan, the lines travel down the screen as well. The only time I had seen this happen before was when I was running my DVD ripping software (DVD Shrink) while trying to watch - I guess the processing was too demanding? However, this happens all the time now and it's the worst with 4:3 material.

I've tried closing any other programs running in the background. Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Nick

Not a lot of information to go by so these are just randomly selected guesses from commonly ignored problem spots.

Could be software, cabling or hardware. My system runs video great when it is cold and clean. Seriously, I smoke and there is a lot of string lint like dust that collects on the fan blades, cooling fins and such with the smoke residue being a glue. I get better performance off my video card when it is cool and clean. CPU also needs the same attention.

Also, a stuffed hard drive with minimal room left and fragmented badly. If you run swinedows, as I do, and have run several other applications the paging can start to have an effect.

The difference being a year and all was working great and now it is not, can point to these or the myriad of applications and drivers that could have been installed and un-installed and leaving contaminates behind.

Cleaning up the inside of your box and checking the hardware, cabling and any other place that the environment can cause havoc on is always a benefit even if it does not solve your current issue.

ISO files are pretty big so common tips to speed up performance (specially when dealing with large files) are:

=> Defragment your HD
=> Make sure DMA (Direct Memory Access) is configured for the HD
=> Optimize your Windows swapfile; Google for specific tips but basically:
1.Configure it to your fastest HD and avoid putting it on the same HD as Windows
2.Make the maximum and minimum size equal in size (to avoid dynamic resizing which hits performance)
3.If you have more than one HD put a swapfile of equal size on each HD (except the system HD; see 1. above)

Other generic tips geared toward increasing performance are:
=> Disable unnecessary Windows services
=> Disable unnecessary helper programs during startup
=> Check and double-check your system for viruses, trojans, spyware and the like
=> Increase the amount of RAM

If all disk are equal, then placing a swap file on each with equal sizes my not make things worst. Though consider:
1) The case where a minimum sized swap is required on the boot disk to allow dumps.
2) If you have multiple swap files over several disks, then the slowest performing disk will be you bottle neck due that windows will utilize the sum of all swap files as one memory paging file.
3) If you have several disks and can set partitions, then set a partition for a temp file of about 10 gigs which can be cleaned and defragged on every reboot, a partition for your paging file fore going the dump. Separate partitions for Windows/Programs and one for data then redirect your "My Documents" to that drive.

These are things that I have done and found to work efficiently and not widely found procedures on the myriad of boards with the "canned" statements.

2) If you have multiple swap files over several disks, then the slowest performing disk will be you bottle neck due that windows will utilize the sum of all swap files as one memory paging file.

If there is more than one swapfile, Windows will use the one where a disk operation is not going on at the moment. So it is kind of the same principal as a RAID-0 setup where you are writing to two disks at the same time thus speeding the total write speed. Yes, the slowest disk will be where it writes the slowest but it is still faster to write to it than to wait for the end of a write operation on the disk and only then write to the swapfile. If you have a ridiculously slower drive (when compared to the others) then you should take it out of the mix. I'm trying to be brief here.

3) If you have several disks and can set partitions, then set a partition for a temp file of about 10 gigs which can be cleaned and defragged on every reboot, a partition for your paging file fore going the dump. Separate partitions for Windows/Programs and one for data then redirect your "My Documents" to that drive.

Partitions are good to speed up defragmentation jobs but they will not speed up the total write speed for file writes if it is located on the same drive. If the HD card is busy writing to a partition on drive "X" and you attempt simultaneously to write to a different partition on drive "X" it will have to poll both operations (and actually loose time compared to sequentially writing to the first partition and upon finishing to the other partition because the HD head is traveling back and forth farther apart as partitions are physically sequential on a disk). In fact you can only get faster speeds if you are writing to different physical drives which are on their own IDE or SATA slot. Each IDE slot is composed of a dual-channel bus which allows you to put 2 HDs but they are really sharing the same bus so the card will loose some time because you can't use the data bus simultaneously for both. There is a potential situation where a partition just for the swapfile on the same physical disk will be a good strategy -> when using a dynamic swapfile size. When using a dynamic swapfile size it will be faster for the system to dynamically rearrange the swapfile if it is close together and not subject to defragmentation (all true when it's on its own partition). But you want to avoid that in the first place as dynamically resizing the swapfile is a big performance hit. It was a trade-off between performance and using less space for the swapfile but in these days where HD space is cheap you don't care about any longer about a swapfile that is bigger.

These are things that I have done and found to work efficiently and not widely found procedures on the myriad of boards with the "canned" statements.

I hope you're not implying that I simply posted a canned suggestion. I use these guidelines myself with very satisfactory results and I know a little of what I'm talking about.

cheers

Yes I was implying that. Your first post was basically what you can read on any forums FAQ. Anyone having read the reply to the original question and sought out more information would have found the information in your first reply almost within the 'goggle' search itself. However, the same can not be said for your subsequent post which is much more informative and why I suggested what I did. The paging file has more to do with OS operations and the loading applications and the temp files have more to do with the application operations them selfs. So, having designated disks/partitions with the 'Recycler' turned off for those drives, can dramatically increase overall performance. There are a few computers out there with only one really huge disk, many mismatched hard drives, and raid systems with the logical equivalent to a single disk, where the appropriate and thought out usage of partitions will have the most dramatic effect.

Good, I'm glad we cleared that up. Does VLC use a temp folder? No, so your suggestion on partitions is mute and doesn't help the original poster playing choppy video.

Yeap cleared that up. My first post was most relevant and thank you for repeating it for me.

...thank you for repeating it for me.

ROTFLMAO :lol: