Poor Quality Video

[susieg]

Hi!

Home someone can help. Bit of a PC novice. My more powerful pc has died and I have been left using an old win 98 with only 128mb ram. Have bs player pro 2.1. No matter what videoclips I play, the quality is terrible and it keeps glitching. The sound is out of synch with the video and it is as if the video cant keep up and is going slower than it should. I have all correct codecs [I think]. Is this because my pc is so useless and the memory is not sufficient? I do have another memory card in the pc with an added 64mb [The Pc wont accept more] but the pc isn't acknowledging it. Is there anything I can do until I can get a better pc. I use bs player a lot and hope there's a way to improve the viewing quality.

Many thanks for listening to the rambling

Susie

[J7N]

96 MB of RAM (or even less) is enough for playback of common MPEG-4 ASP (aka DivX) video. You CPU should be equal to at least 500 MHz Pentium 2. Without knowing more information about your hardware and software configuration I can only suggest to try watching your movies in full screen with these options activated:

- For full screen mode switch to: 640*480 or 800*600 (depending on the res of your videos)
- Don't resize video in full screen.

I have successfully watched movies using an old 1 MB video adapter which could not even support 24-bit color. Video looked quite acceptable.

[Tizio]

I think it all depends on which codecs you are using.
For example Nero decoders are really CPU expensive!

Which codecs are you using?

[susieg]

Hi!
Thanks for your help. I really know nothing about PC's and am still at the learning stage. Specs say that it is a Celeron 600MHZ. 128mb ram

I'll list what I downloaded. I had no idea what I needed, so really downloaded what I could find, just in case. :oops: I mainly play AVI and need the quality not only for watching but for capping in most instances.

Mpeg-2_codec
3IVX_d4_45
AVI Codec pack plus 2
Getright
AVI Codec pack


Thanks a lot for all your help!

[susieg]

Sorry! Also have divx and xvid. I play AVI, MPEG, XVID ASD [Although they play poorly] and others

[Digiface]

[quote="J7N"]You CPU should be equal to at least 500 MHz Pentium 2.[quote]

I remember playing DivX/XviD movies fine with my previous (my first real PC) computer, that was Pentium II 350MHz & 64Mb SDRAM. :)

[adicoto]

IIRC there are some issues between BSPlayer and Win98. Can you try to swich in video options the rendering methode to direct draw or overlay renderer ? I don't recall wich I used when installing it on Win98 machines even with better specs.
Can you tell us what videocard do you have ? IIRC celeron @ 600 is on AGP 2x (S3Trio, Geforce MX, Ati Rage, Intel 720 or onboard video )

[susieg]

I'll try and find out and get back to you asap. Thanks for the help!!

[susieg]

The video card details say:

Name: RAGE PRO TURBO AGP2X (English)
Manufacturer: ATI Tech Enhanced
Chip Type: Mach 64:RagePro
DAC Type: Internal
Approx total memory: 8.0mb
current display mode: 800x600

Hope that helps. Will try the switch of video options now

Many thanks for all the help!

[adicoto]

If you run into an error saying "can't create direct draw surface" it's because of the insuficient video memory on the videocard
Sugestion, uninstall all codecs, install just FFDshow and BSPlayer 1.37. It's the lightest combination for your computer.

[susieg]

I haven't had any error messages at all. Thanks for the help everyone! Got lots of ideas to look into, now!!

[BSPeter]

Please read this post when going back to version 1.37.

(P.S.: You may even consider to go back to version 0.86; read item (a) under MISCELLANEOUS in the second half of my Help2Help-post)

[J7N]

I have played croppend and downscaled 640*352 videos on this machine:
- Celeron 400 MHz
- 96 MB RAM
- Intel740 8MB
CPU usage was around 90% (with audio), so it would be impossible to play full size PAL/NTSC files.

BSPlayer v1.36 works properly under Win98.