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Videos keep jumping in Vista Media Centre

RohanRohan Registered User regular
edited October 2008 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
It's pretty much as the title describes. I'm running 32-bit Home Premium on a dedicated media pc, but I'm having serious trouble with videos jumping weirdly. I've tried two codec packs - the latest Klite with everything enabled, and Vista Codecs V473. It's happened now on both packs. The weird thing is, if I open up any menu with the remote, the video plays just fine down in the corner, and when I go back to it from the menu it plays fine too for a few seconds, and then it's back to jumping. I've taken some small videos to show you what I mean, and they can be downloaded below. Bear in mind I was taking them with my digital camera so the quality isn't brilliant, my hand wasn't too steady and the camera's microphone keeps picking up the camera itself! But sound isn't that important. I've taken videos of Media Centre in action while playing three random things -

First Example - Nirvana Unplugged

Second Example - Princess Mononoke

Third Example - Dr Horrible

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.

Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Rohan on

Posts

  • Dark ShroudDark Shroud Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    You first problem is you tried those codec packs. And now that you've installed both of them it can only get worse from here. K-Lite is extremely bloated and doesn't play nice at all with other codecs.

    For lightweight playback try CCCP. If you want to attempt to uninstall those codec packs you can try a freeware program called Revo Uninstaller.

    Dark Shroud on
    http://gplus.to/DarkShroud
  • RohanRohan Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Well, I've been using Klite on my desktop for years now and it's never been a hassle... as to the other pack, I don't know anything about it but the author wrote a good post about how "less is more" and that with this pack, Media Centre will play everything with minimum of fuss. Hey, I was desperate at the time to get my media pc going and I would've tried anything ;)

    Thanks for that tip though, I'll try both Revo and the CCCP pack.

    Rohan on
    ...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.

    Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
  • RohanRohan Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    It's happening still in CCCP, even after a format and reinstall of Vista... but this time, I've noticed that it only happens when I use the third zoom mode in Media Centre. I use that mode on a lot of tv shows that have been recorded ages ago in 4:3 pan and scan, and it stretches them on the screen better than any of the other zoom modes. The fourth isn't bad so we can use that, and so the problem isn't as bad as we thought... but it's still irritating. I put together a very similar media pc back home last year and it has the exact same version of Media Centre and what-not... yet it doesn't have that problem. Weird.

    Rohan on
    ...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.

    Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
  • Dark ShroudDark Shroud Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    It might be a memory issue. If you don't have enough or some or some is going bad. I had a PC I was working on for someone start stuttering when I tried to play some downloaded videos. I dropped in another 512mb of ram and the problem went away.

    Dark Shroud on
    http://gplus.to/DarkShroud
  • RohanRohan Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Aha! Apparently, memory isn't the problem... the problem was MediaCenterFX. I used it to apply different themes to Media Centre on the media pc at home and never had a problem with it, so I used the same build with the same themes this time around. On a whim I did a system restore to before I installed MediaCenterFX, and hey presto... videos are smooth now in all zoom modes.

    Rohan on
    ...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.

    Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
  • GrimReaperGrimReaper Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Since you've got it now fixed i'd like to give some advice, if you want to install any additional codecs then don't bother with codec packs. Install ffdshow-tryouts and assign the video/audio codecs and hey presto. Done.

    With the VFW plugin it can also be used to encode video too, I use it occasionally for h264 and huffyuv encoding.

    GrimReaper on
    PSN | Steam
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    I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
  • RohanRohan Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Thanks for the advice Grim, but unbelievably, the problem is now back... and nothing was changed. On zoom mode three, all videos keep jumping. What on earth could be causing that?

    Rohan on
    ...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.

    Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
  • Dark ShroudDark Shroud Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    GrimReaper wrote: »
    Since you've got it now fixed i'd like to give some advice, if you want to install any additional codecs then don't bother with codec packs. Install ffdshow-tryouts and assign the video/audio codecs and hey presto. Done.

    With the VFW plugin it can also be used to encode video too, I use it occasionally for h264 and huffyuv encoding.

    That's basically what CCCP does, it uses ffdshow with Hali Media Splitter.

    Dark Shroud on
    http://gplus.to/DarkShroud
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