Stuttering fmv's! GRR!

[BoredMan]

Hi!
I have a P3 800Mhz system with 288Mb of RAM and a Geforce3 Ti200 video card running on WinXP.

My problem is that whenever I try to run any game with any kind of cut scene/fmv that is video based and not 'game model based' (like Vice City is) the video is EXTREMELY stuttery playing at about 1fps and the sound all choppy.

The weird thing is that I can play the games themselves fine at 32bit colour and 1024x768res with all effects and draw distance switched etc on so it all looks gorgeous?? No problems while playing the game itself.

Its just very disruptive when I complete a level and have to wait 5minutes to get through a 30second cut scene!

This also occurs with the intro credits when loading up a game?

I've tried every tweak I can think of and updated to latest drivers, switched off all background programmes etc etc. But the vids still stutter?

The weird thing is that I can usually play the videos with a media player fine its just when its loaded through the game that the problems start.

I've run out of ideas now which is why I'm turning to the forums for help!

The main games I've gone through so far are Rallisport Challenge, Enter The Matrix and Midnight Club 2. the first was not so much a problem since the only vid was the intro screen but the last two has videos which are integral to the game plot so it would be nice to be able to watch them without breaking the game flow?!

[krocodile]

Just out of curiousity, what file type is the FMV that's playing? Do you know? For example, AVI, MPEG, DIVX (can have AVI extension too), MOV, etc etc. This information might be useful for myself and others who would like to contribute to assisting you. Also, could you please post your system specs?

Thanks a lot :)

[BoredMan]

The fmv's for Rallisport and Midnight Club are *.bik files (I found these were made from www.radgametools.com) while the Matrix fmv's are divx's but with the audio track in separate files and use some propietary codec that no one seemed to have figured out yet.

And my specs are:
PentiumIII 800
288MB RAM
120GB WD HD
Siluro Geforce3 Ti200 DVI
Pioneer DVD Rom, Mitsumi CDR-RW
GeniusIII NIC
USB Mouse/Keyboard/Joystick/Scanner
SB AWE64
15" LG Flatron LCD
XP Professional with Service Pack 1

And I cant remember what motherboard I got but it uses the Via4in1 drivers?

Umm is there anything else that would be useful!?

[krocodile]

Originally posted by BoredMan
The fmv's for Rallisport and Midnight Club are *.bik files (I found these were made from www.radgametools.com) while the Matrix fmv's are divx's but with the audio track in separate files and use some propietary codec that no one seemed to have figured out yet.

I might suggest you turn off all the background processes not needed in Windows XP. Tweak town wrote a good article on that. Also, make Windows XP look plain jane for test purposes. Turn of all the fancy menus and bubbly look. Have you also tried updating your DirectX to the lastest version?

If you can, try moving your mouse and keyboard to PS/2 away from USB. I have seen USB devices cause weird issues like that in the past. You might alway want to consider playing the game with sound disabled. Literally pull your Sound Blaster card out and try loading it without it in the machine.

These are the best options I can give for now. If I come up with something else I'll let you know. Thanks for the reply :)

Regards

[BoredMan]

Thanks for the advice! I already have XP in 'classic' mode as I think all the fanciness is just annoying!

But I did pull out the sound card and hehey! I got smooth intro's! The only thing is that it seems to be running at half speed? While the extreme jerkiness from before is gone, the videos are playing reeeaaally slowly...

Thanks again!