Choppy video

[albo]

Hi folks,

This has been a problem as long as i've had this machine, but just getting around to posting about it now. Video is quite choppy. It's like you can see the still frames when the camera is panning alot, and sometimes it's slow when the action is fast. Not sure if I'm describing it well.

I have discrete video, and it reports that VLC player is indeed using the NVIDIA chip. So, I'm not sure what's going on. I've played a bit with the NVIDIA settings, but it doesn't seem to change much.

Has anyone else come up against this issue? Very strange, and kind of a bummer. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

thanks!

T410 2516-CTO
NVIDIA NVS 3100M, driver 8.17.12.7593
Win 7 Pro x64 SP1

[Cigarguy]

There's no way you should be lagging with those specs. I can playback 1080p no problem on a stock T61. It might be a driver(s) error. Try reloading the chipset and video drivers. I'd also download Klite Codec Pack and playback via Media Player Classic.

[catalinus]

...
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

thanks!

T410 2516-CTO
NVIDIA NVS 3100M, driver 8.17.12.7593
Win 7 Pro x64 SP1

You should check the power-saving settings - in some power-plans the CPUs are kept at a very low speed as to minimize heat and maximize battery.

The other thing that might be worth checking is if in VLC Preferences -> Input and codecs you can enable "use GPU accelerated decoding" - unfortunately that does not work very well in some configurations so it is a very "hit and miss" thing, but if it works it will also improve things a lot!

[albo]

Thanks folks. The power plan shouldn't be an issue - i have minimum CPU set at 5%, max at 100%.

I'll play around with VLC prefs, and will look into the codec pack and try things with windows media player. i'll report back

[jayton4]

I am not exactly sure, but I think what you are describing may be what is called Jitter rather than choppiness.

Have you tried disabling Optimus and trying it with just Nvidia NVS 3100m only or Intel only? Maybe Optimus is not properly configured. I never used it anyway. I typically have Nvidia enabled only.

Are you using any antivirus or internet security suites? If so, try disabling their services and startup entries in msconfig to see if it makes any difference.

Have you tried restoring the OS? It may be quicker to just reinstall Windows and your program files instead. It only takes a few hours vs. days chasing down a problem that you may never find. Try the videos after you reinstall each program to make sure they aren't causing the problem. Is your current OS installation the Lenovo version or from a plain Windows install disc?

Do you have mismatched RAM? I have seen that cause video issues on older generation ThinkPads before.

VLC should not need any changing of any preferences to run smooth 1080p video on a T410.

[albo]

Thanks for the thoughts, jayton. I think the right way to describe the problem is that the fps is low. So, when the image pans quickly, you see individual images. Perhaps that's called "jitter", i dunno.

My RAM is 8GB matched, running DDR. Haven't tried disabling Optimus (perhaps I will at some point - i do occasionally run on battery, so would rather not totally disable it). But, one thing seems to be happening: when I have lots of stuff open in the background, the problem (i think) seems worse. I haven't exhaustively tested this hypothesis yet, but I was watching last night on a freshly-rebooted system, and it seemed fine. This "stuff" I have in the background isn't chewing CPU - it's just sitting there idle. But, it has a pretty massive RAM footprint. Does NVIDIA share system RAM?

I've seen some other things online about some heat issues causing the NVIDIA to throttle itself. Wonder if that might be it? I have "active cooling" selected in the power plan, but if i'm really concerned, perhaps I should look into tpfancontrol. I have speedfan running, but it isn't able to get at my GPU temp for some reason.

Only anti-virus is microsoft security essentials, which is pretty low-impact.

Reinstalling the OS is a cure for many ills. The only way I'd go through that pain, though, would be for a new comp, or for a new SSD drive. Thanks for the suggestion tho .