The VideoLAN Forums

A while back, I downloaded version 1.0.0rc1 and my computer ran the HD files perfectly. Then all of the sudden, it stopped working well, making the video choppy and had a lot more computer usage then normal. Upgrading to rc2 hasn't helped at all. Closing out other programs doesn't help at all and i had the video output set to Windows GUI. Is there any solution to this problem? 1.0.0 was the one that worked best out of all the versions. Here's my specs.

Windows Vista
Processor: AMD Turion(tm) X2 Dual-Core Mobile RM-70 (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
3 gig RAM
Video Card: ATI Technologies Inc. ATI Radeon 3100 Graphics (updated to the latest driver)

From the looks of you spec you should be able to decode HD H.264 without much of a problem.

Delete VLC's preferences and cache files (search forum for how). If that doesn't work/you want it to be even faster try skipping the loop filter:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=42328

Arite.

It runs a little smoother but I can't even have one program running in the background. Is that normal?

What is the resolution etc. of the HD MKV files you're playing - 720p, 1080p? If the latter then probably not that unreasonable.

Arite.

It's 720p. And the video still isn't playing very smoothly. It's tolerable, but it hangs up and skips every 30 seconds or so. Sometimes with even shorter intervals. And some of the more action oriented scenes are taking up 100 percent computer usage, a problem i've never encountered.

What are VLC's messages? Does the same problem occur with VLC 0.9.9/the older 1.0.0-rc1 as well? If it does then issue is probably not VLC-specific - graphics driver related perhaps.

Arite.

I experience the same phenomena with Windows Vista Home Basic, AMD 64 Turion X2 Dual Coure Mobile RM-70 2.ghz 4 megs of ram, , ATI Radeon HD3200 Graphics card. Interestingly enough this is not the first time I had this problem with choopy video the first time Windows Update caused my computers battery power plan set on something other than High Performance - when I corrected this discrepancy everything worked fine so this time when I started experiencing this problem that was the first thing I checked - that wasn't the cause of the problem. And returning to an older version of VLC also didn't work. all my drivers are up to date - any other suggestions?

I am experiencing the same problem. Very choppy playback of a 720p mkv file in fullscreen mode on a 1080p monitor.

I am running Windows 7 RC x64 on a Core 2 Quad Q9400 (2.66 GHz) and a GTX 260....so I don't think it's a problem with power.

Additionally, the same video is running very smoothly in full screen on my Hackintosh partition, using the same version of VLC (1.0.1), but for Mac. Any ideas on how to improve this?

One thing I tried was changing the Deinterlacing to "Linear", but that made all the lines have jagged edges, but the picture smoothed up a bit....not sure what's going on. the picture looks a WHOLE lot better on the Mac side... and I don't even like booting into the Mac partition because of the lack of PCI sound card support (but that's an entire other sob story)

Any solutions on how to fix the choppy 720p playback on Windows 7??

If loop filter trick doesn't help, then there really isn't anything you can do but wait for better H.264 decoder. Media Player Classic Home Cinema will work better in case you are looking another player.

But doesn't the Mac version of VLC have the same h.264 decoder? (please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't claim to know much about this by any means) Why does the same video file run so much smoother on the mac os on identical hardware and VLC version? Maybe it's an OS issue then, considering the scenario...in which case it's a big dissappointment for me considering the big expectations I had for replacing Mac OS with Windows 7 x64.

IIRC VLC can use QuickTime decoder in Mac OS X for H.264 video.There might another differences but since I don't have Mac or use one, I am not sure.

Try enable GPU acceleration in Input and codec settings and change lower video quality post-processing level to 0. Sure, you will get good results by this. THEREFORE NO CODEC PACKS NEEDED..!!