MP4 playback problems

[spelo5967]

I am only using VLC for playback of downloaded video clips and am not nearly as knowledgeable as the posts I see here, but here's my problem: there are a particular group of video clips from a particular site that just play like crap every single time. They are distorted and incredibly choppy (video only) and the video actually freezes up for the remainder of playback about half the time. They are from http://www.uahirise.org/media/ - specifically, the "HiClips for Individual Observations, 18 Apr 2012 (MP4)" clips in the lower right portion of the page. FYI - this is a very legit site, not porn, etc. Could somebody download and play a couple of these with VLC and let me know if it's just my copy or if there's something wrong with the clips? I play all kinds of file types with VLC all the time and have minor playback problems sometimes, but these are the only ones that are pretty much unwatchable and I really want to watch them! Thanks!

[Lotesdelere]

I can't reproduce the issue but you can try with another video output module:
http://wiki.videolan.org/WindowsFAQ-2.0 ... _output.3F

[spelo5967]

Thanks - that helped. Looks like DirectX works the best for me, although it didn't solve the problem entirely. Windows GDI was actually worse and OpenGL crashed my graphics card twice. Speaking of that, I think my graphics card is crapping out - how can I go about verifying that? Is there a testing site I can go to?