Choppy playback from external drive

[JR123]

When I play video files from my external hard disk playback is choppy using VLC. Other players such as real player can play the files with no problem. Also, the same files play without the problem using VLC if I copy them across to my internal hard disk. Any suggestions?

I have a macbook 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running OS X 10.4.11. The external disk is NTFS SATA connected through USB. I use MacFUSE with the NTFS-3G plugin to read/write to the disk but I don't think this is involved in the problem as all disk operations work fine for everything else and other players work ok.

[AKazak]

I have exactly the same issue!!!


System Configuration:
MacBook Pro, 2.16 Intel Core Duo + 1Gb RAM
Mac OS X 10.5.2
VLC 0.8.6f
External USB 2.0 mini-IDE enclosure with NTFS formatted HDD

What is recommended to try in order to fix the issue

[eAi]

Well, obviously the question should be 'what is the video?'

I play back videos frequently from a USB 2 hard drive using VLC with no problem. These are a variety of both 720p h.264 and standard TV videos.

[AKazak]

'what is the video?'

Well...

Example 0
Stream 0
Codec: XVID
Resolution: 640 x 352
Frame Rate: 25 fps
Stream 1
Codec: mpga
Channels: 2
Frequency: 48 000 Hz
Bitrate: 128 kb/s

Example 1
Stream 0
Codec: XVID
Resolution: 640 x 272
Frame Rate: 23.976000 fps
Stream 1
Codec: mpga
Channels: 2
Frequency: 48 000 Hz
Bitrate: 128 kb/s

I play video files

What are your your problem video files?

[kboyette]

This happens to me when I play avi's from dvd's. It seems to have begun with the Leopard update. The disc will spin down during play, the buffer runs out, and then the video pauses while the disc spins back up again.

[AKazak]

Despite all my expectations, this video file was played back without any chops:

Example 1
Stream 0
Codec: XVID
Resolution: 720 x 320
Frame Rate: 23.976024 fps
Stream 1
Codec: a52
Channels: 2
Frequency: 48 000 Hz
Bitrate: 192 kb/s

[ricardoph]

Hi,

I have the same issue, after unchecking the option "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep whenever possible" from "energy saver" at "system preferences" in my macbook things've gotten better, and actually there is no problem having the disks always on, in fact that's better than turning them off and on so repeteadly as OSX does with external drives. Most of the time the playback flaws were provoked for the time that the drive needed to restart after being slept by osx, being completely uncapable to keep up with the video....

Anyway, when playing x264 movies the problem still persists, and seems to me that VLC's buffer is just not enough, unlike Real Player and most of the others that watch their asses buffering way more they actually need....

If anyone knows how to increase VLC's buffer, please let me know, I'd be glad to be the guinea pig and post the results....

Thanks!

P.S. My configuration is a 2.2 Ghz Macbook with 4GB Ram and Leopard 10.5.5

[ricardoph]

By the way, plaback's choppy only when I'm using my 2.5 SATA-2-USB2.0 HTFS+ external drive, which uses one USB port for power and communication.