vista media center poor video playback

[mikeald]

Hi all,

I have vista ultimate and have recently got my newly built media pc playing my music perfectly and my ripped dvd vob files perfectly.

However,

I have tried playing back some avi and wmv files, and the playback is sort of jumping, shadowing and ghosting. It is really weird, the video is playing but I can see like a silhoutte of the video footage within the first few seconds of the clip. (Kind of hard to explain).

But what is real weird, is if I move the mouse around or press a button on the remote control during playback, then it plays perfectly!!!

So in other words:

poor playback of video files, unless I keep moving the mouse around or keep pressing buttons on the remote.

Any ideas on how I can sort this please?

I have tried altering screen resolutions, and I have the latest drivers for my gigabyte m/b which has onboard radeon hd3200.

Cheers

Mike

[glc]

How much system ram do you have? Onboard video can use up a lot of ram.

[mikeald]

2gb ram,

but like I say, the vob dvd files play perfectly,

and if I exit media center, I can play the avi files perfectly in media player. THey just won't play correctly in media center.

Any ideas?

Mike

[jdeb]

do you have some other video playback software on the pc? maybe another program is messing with media center. do you have nero installed?

[glc]

That's not enough ram for Vista Ultimate when you are using onboard video that can eat almost that much all by itself. Upgrade to 3 or 4 gb and/or get a discrete video card.

[mikeald]

hi guys thanks for the replies,

No I do not have nero or any other video playback software, other than windows media player 11.

I will upgrade to 3gb ram tonight and try that,

But if it is because I don't have enough ram, how come dvd playback is perfect within media center?

And also when I playback my avi files in media player, playback is also perfect. AVI playback is only terrible when played within media center.

Just seems like it is a problem with media center to me, rather than a hardware issue?

Cheers

Mike

[mikeald]

hi all,

Upgraded to 4gb ram, problem still there.

So then, I went into ati catalyst, and clicked on 'restore all default settings'. Problem solved, and now works perfectly with 2gb ram.

Just goes to show how the simplest of things can cause CHAOS!!!!

Mike

[glc]

Why not leave 4gb in there? It will help things. Ram is so cheap these days I always recommend maxing it out.