"Hanging" video playback

[P Greene]

OK, I'm out of ideas.

I just finished building this machine. 2.3 ghz P4, 512 RAM.
ATI All in Wonder 8500 video card, SBlaster Live audio. Asus P4B533 mb. W 2000.

No matter which video player I use, video playback "hangs" intermittently and any audio associated with that frame "hangs" as well, yielding a buzzing sound. The "hang" is very brief and very maddening.

I have downloaded and installed every update and driver I can find, no change. All video files do this including some that ran fine on the PIII 733 that I replaced.

I've used WMP, the "file player" from ATI and others.
Any ideas ?

P

[Ammok]

YIp, PowerDVD 4.00 or higher. I had a similar prob but found on my system that I had a high colour setting, 32bit, and the comp just could not hack it. So, pratting around I reduced the colour for video play bback to 8 bit and no more hanging. And you won't notice any difference in video quality.

Reason i recommend PowerDVD is that I know it has a setting for changing dvd colour playback. (nothing to do with your desktop colour resolution, you can leave that alone or try it lower if your soft dvd player won't reduce the colour setting.)

I have "fixed" two machines by changing over to PowerDVD and setting playback colour to 8 bit.

I don't think it's a processing issue, more to do with memory is my guess.

[dave-harper]

did you do the directx also ?

[Ammok]

both had dx8.1, but as a rule I always update everything I can to latest versions, except nvidia drivers, where I stick with the ones I know are stable for a given system, like 23.11 for g2 boards etc.

[TARP2]

It has been a while since I had that prob, Try disabling DMA?....

[P Greene]

OK, As I write this I'm hanging my head.

Good ideas all and thanks. Removing the Sound Blaster Card solved the problem. I enabled the onboard audio chip on the Asus P4B533 MB and no more hangups. Based on some other probs. I had with this machine, I think it might have been a compatibility issue.

Now, I only get audio from the left speaker on TV play. Both channels work fine on all other audio functions. It aint the audio chip, speakers or cables.

Any ideas ??

Of course the manual mentions nothing about it nor can I find any reference to it in any settings.

[Ammok]

Yuck.

On my sons machine he only gets sound out the right side speaker, he won't let me upgrade from 98 to XP and reformat etc etc so he had mono sound for about a year now. Thats a sound blaster card too. :(

[Peter M]

Originally posted by TARP2
It has been a while since I had that prob, Try disabling DMA?....

That'll make it worse.

What you need to do is identify what is blocking the system for too long, causing these visible/audible delays in your supposedly isochronous media data stream.

For a start, a LOWER value on "PCI Latency" in your BIOS might help the fairness on the PCI bus. Moving off the PCI sound card and using an onboard, directly chipset driven, audio solution also relieves PCI bus contention.

[dave-harper]

if the sound is fine otherwise
i've seen it before where the equalizer balance was set to the left or right accidentally
that was in windows media player
check the tv part and see if it has it's own settings

what exactly do you mean by TV play ?????