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Mordred478 · 09-25-2005, 10:49 AM

So here's what it comes down to: My PC will not play HD video files without the image jerking, stuttering and stalling so much that I'm ready to to fire a BFG straight at my lovely Dell 24" LCD. I have a powerful new (nary six months old) model Dimension desktop from Dell, with a P4 3.2GHz CPU, an nVidia GeForce 6600 GT video card, 2GB of fast RAM, and a 10,000 RPM hard drive, and I use PowerDVD 6.0 for playing HD video files.
When I first got this desktop and tried to play HD files, and encountered this problem, the HD files I was playing were located on my slower, 7200 RPM drive. I theorized that the voluminous data could not be read fast enough from this drive, and that this was the cause of the jerkiness. Thus, I tried playing HD video files from my faster drive, and indeed, while the jerkiness persisted, the problem was much improved.
But still it persists, and drives me bananas, and more to the point, for reasons I cannot figure out, some HD video files will play with only minimal jerkiness, while with other files the problem is so severe that the files are unwatchable.
Another idea I have experimented with is breaking the HD videos down into smaller individual files using HDTVtoMPEG2. So, for example, instead of one 5.4GB HD video file, I'll have two files half that size, or even more files of even smaller size. So far, while I think this idea may have made certain particularly monstrous files playable, I don't believe it has helped. This is probably a RAM issue anyway.
Thus, I am soliciting help from all quarters. How can I get a nice HD file to play smoothly on my PC? Solve my problem before midnight tonight and receive a bamboo steamer as our way of saying thanks.

09-25-2005, 10:49 AM	#1
Mordred478 My plasma is High Def. Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 7	Getting HD video to play on a PC So here's what it comes down to: My PC will not play HD video files without the image jerking, stuttering and stalling so much that I'm ready to to fire a BFG straight at my lovely Dell 24" LCD. I have a powerful new (nary six months old) model Dimension desktop from Dell, with a P4 3.2GHz CPU, an nVidia GeForce 6600 GT video card, 2GB of fast RAM, and a 10,000 RPM hard drive, and I use PowerDVD 6.0 for playing HD video files. When I first got this desktop and tried to play HD files, and encountered this problem, the HD files I was playing were located on my slower, 7200 RPM drive. I theorized that the voluminous data could not be read fast enough from this drive, and that this was the cause of the jerkiness. Thus, I tried playing HD video files from my faster drive, and indeed, while the jerkiness persisted, the problem was much improved. But still it persists, and drives me bananas, and more to the point, for reasons I cannot figure out, some HD video files will play with only minimal jerkiness, while with other files the problem is so severe that the files are unwatchable. Another idea I have experimented with is breaking the HD videos down into smaller individual files using HDTVtoMPEG2. So, for example, instead of one 5.4GB HD video file, I'll have two files half that size, or even more files of even smaller size. So far, while I think this idea may have made certain particularly monstrous files playable, I don't believe it has helped. This is probably a RAM issue anyway. Thus, I am soliciting help from all quarters. How can I get a nice HD file to play smoothly on my PC? Solve my problem before midnight tonight and receive a bamboo steamer as our way of saying thanks.