How to better quality by optimizing system?

[the planner]

Some facts: I have a Pentium 120Mhz, 48Mb RAM, CD-ROM 8-speed, Win95b. The problem is that my avi (asf,mpeg,realmedia works fine) movies are played in 'shocks'. I get to see some seconds film and then the screen hangs for 1 second and then I see motion again for 2 seconds. The sound is continuos though. The movies are like played in little bits. Yes, i play my movies from my cd-rom but if i copy them to harddisk the problem stays but its less bad. Ok, what can I do about this? I already increased the virtual memory. I don't have any other programs running that steal memory. It could be the speed of my CPU that is a little too slow (120MHz). I heard something about buffers that handle the audio and the pictures, well maybe there is a way to increase their size(?). I also have the hardware acceleration on maximum. I have the right drivers for my monitor and my adapter, and I'm sure I have the right codecs. What's the problem here? Lack of RAM? Too slow CPU? My videocard doesn't have RAM on it (it's an old thingie but it works). Ok, smartasses, I hope someone has some ideas to better the movie quality.

[setarip]

"Ok, smartasses, I hope someone has some ideas to better the movie quality."

Although your closing remark is hardly an incentive to respond, the OBVIOUS answer is quite simply that your system is underpowered in all regards...

[tomnhanni]

Well, you do have a sorry excuse for a PC.... but don't throw it out just yet if you want to fool around a bit. My Dad has a Pentium 200 Mhz laptop and I recently set up his system to play divx avis-- 'shock' free. Use the original windows media player. And the only way to get the cpu and grafics card to keep up with playback is to resize the clip REAl small. Something like 288x*** or even smaller. Then when you playback just full screen. By the way the only thing you can do to 'optimize' your system is invest some cash in a new system. It will save a LOT of frustration.

[the planner]

ok, I knew this would the answers. First of all you have to accept that some of you ARE smartasses! That is not offending! I even want to be one myself! Well I guess I will have to live with my outdated PC. But I could convert all my avi's to mpeg's. That would take lots of time (and space) but it would be nicer to view. Suggestions are still welcome. Have a nice year 2002.

[squidgy]

And I thought I was unlucky with a 500MHz processor. (see http://forum.digital-digest.com/show...?threadid=1701 )

I don't think converting to MPEG will take a lot of time, or space. I found that converting an AVI to MPEG with TPMGEnc took roughly one third of the time it took to convert the VOB to AVI using FlasKMPEG. Plus, of coure, the resulting MPEG ought to take up far less space.