freezing frames on laptop

[diana]

I'll try and be as specific about my problem as possible. I play avi files on my normal computer with Media Player, have installed divx 5.02, and the tsunami filter pack. All films play brilliantly. I have installed the exact same on my laptop (Sony Vaio PCG-Z600RE) and I have audio and video, but it freezes every second or so, like the computer can't keep up. I have installed anti-freeze, no change. I have checked requirements and the laptop should be able to handle it. I have even downloaded the whole film to the laptop to see if it was the cd rom player that was the problem, but nothing changed. I also tried different films.
Any other suggestions?

[Enchanter]

Which version of Tsunami? And did you install 5.02 via the codec pack or stand-alone installer? And what codec is the movie compressed with?

[diana]

Thanks for the quick reply. The version of Tsunami is 3.8.5 and I installed DIVX via the pack and disabled the installation of the player there. With what codec the movie is compressed with??? I would have to study the forums and find out how to check that. I'm just an end user, I installed what my brother told me to install and all films work fine (on the normal computer that is..)

[Enchanter]

You can check what codec is used by loading up the movie file in Virtualdub and going to File -> File Information.

You might want to try out the latest Tsunami pack (v.3.9.6) and install BOTH 3.11 and 5.02. It is likely that the movie you are having trouble with is encoded in 3.11 and the DivX 5.x codec is having trouble decoding it.

[diana]

The code that was used is DIVX MPEG-4 3920 low. Tried new Tsunami pack and DIVX 3.11 nothing works. Could it be a hardware problem, screen settings or something, since it is working on the normal computer?

[Enchanter]

What is the resolution of the movie and what is the CPU speed of the laptop?

[diana]

It is an Intel Pentium III with 496 Mhz, 128 MB RAM, the movie resolution is 512x224

[Enchanter]

Try this and see whether playback is improved:

1. Lower desktop resolution to 800x600 (or even 640x480), and colour depth to 16-bit
2. Disable all playback filters. To do this, you need to use the classic Windows Media Player 6.4 (just type 'mplayer2.exe' under the Run command and the player will open). Play the movie and go to File -> Properties -> [DivX codec]. Slide the playback filter all the way to the left to disable it.

[diana]

Thanks a million for all your time and effort, it works!! It even works with the media player that was installed on it, the 8 version.
Now I'm going to maybe push it too far when I ask if it is possible to configure something so that I have the normal resolution when I work on it and when I playback films it switches to these settings...

[Enchanter]

You're welcome.

As to your other question, I'm not sure if such a thing is possible (unless you can create a scripted AVI file or Auto-run CD, whose technical detail is beyond my knowledge). If you are lucky, a lot of display adapters offer some kinds of quick-resolution-change feature, easily accessible from the system tray. They can usually be enabled from within the Advanced Display properties.

Enjoy your movies.

[UncasMS]

wmp8 isnt a good choice at all


to mich resources are wastet and too little options offered

zoomplayer or bsplayer take much less of your precious system-resources and thus should be a better choice!