The VideoLAN Forums

When I try to play AVI files, I get about 5 seconds of black before the video shows up, with the audio playing fine right from the start. I have tried different video outputs in the preferences but to no avail.

The files play fine in Realplayer, so I'm not sure what to do. Thanks!

I have the same comment, though my video lag (once VLC appears) is usually only about 2 or 3 seconds. Also, when I advance the video several minutes by moving the slider, the video sometimes appears badly pixellated for a couple seconds. This behavior did not appear in any of the prior versions I have used in the past six years, and prior versions would start the video almost immediately instead of after a loading time of 3 or 4 seconds that the current version takes before appearing at all. I haven't mentioned this before as I imagined that the "security update" of 0.9.8a required some additional time and processing to assure the file opened was safe and would not permit anyone to take control of my pc.

N.B. Deleting the %appdata%\vlc folder does appear to have improved things substantially, though the pixellated video seen for a few seconds after advancing the movie several minutes still remains when viewing some H.264 videos.

the video sometimes appears badly pixellated for a couple seconds

do you get libavcodec errors to VLC message log when this happens?

when viewing some H.264 videos

try loop filter trick
http://wiki.videolan.org/WindowsFAQ-0.9 ... s_too_slow

I tried both the loop trick and deleting the appdata folder, but am still getting the video lag and some pixellation. Any other tricks?

Try other media player.