Choppy cutscenes?

[SnakePlisskin]

Has anybody else experienced choppy cutscene videos? For example, the fullscreen intro to the game and the space race victory video are choppy on my system.

It might be because I am running the game in 1920x1200 widescreen but I also have a fairly decent video card (ATI X800 XT PT) and CPU (3.4 P4). I don't know if the videos are played back at the same resolution as the game is set to or not.

Just wondering if others have noticed the same thing...

 

[Aratirn]

I have more than usual stuttering (sometimes audio, more often video) while playing most of the wonder movies. But I always have had problems with any video with 'BINK' in it, so it may be related to that. For other games and people I've heard that getting an up to date DLL for the bink videos works, but then Civ IV is real new... shouldn't be an issue, still wondering what may be wrong with the videos. By the way, I run the game at highest resolution and with all perfomance heavy options on with no noticeable lag, but the video playback problem persists even at lower resolutions and no performance options.

 

[RIT Beast]

Opening movie runs great for me, but the wonder cutscenes just skip like crazy on me. I haven't yet played a game to completion, so I don't know about victory movies yet.

 

[[Gandalf]]

Yep, the Lighthouse wonder movie played at something like 2fps for me. Probably the game just being choppy.

 

[gunnergoz]

It seems to be a very common problem. I suspect it is linked to how the game manages memory, since it impacts both video and audio in the movies.

 

[Snaproll]

I had this problem too, but I updated my drivers and it went away. Might try that if you haven't already.

 

[gunnergoz]

I had this problem too, but I updated my drivers and it went away. Might try that if you haven't already.

Lucky for you that it did. Driver updates are still not helping a lot of us. Your system specs?

 

[C4Shadow]

I have the same issue, I have the lastest drivers installed already.

nVidia 78.01, just installed them like a week or so ago.

 

[ou1975]

I think this game just hates ATI cards

 

[rbird]

Actually, the game ships with a VERY old version of the Bink DLL. You can get updated tools from their website www.radgametools.com , however the binkw32.dll used by CivIV is not included in the public distribution.

The Miles sound driver (from the same company) is much more up to date, just one version behind the current one.

Bob

 

[RIT Beast]

Actually, the game ships with a VERY old version of the Bink DLL. You can get updated tools from their website www.radgametools.com , however the binkw32.dll used by CivIV is not included in the public distribution.

The Miles sound driver (from the same company) is much more up to date, just one version behind the current one.

Bob

Thanks for the tip, I'll check this out after work.

 

[deanis73]

I'm having choppiness, too (especially on cutscenes); I've got the recommended requirements (nVidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB card, 3.0 ghz processor, 1 gb of ram), but it's REALLY slow. It's crashed a few times when I was approached for diplomacy, I had to get around that by hunting down whomever was approaching me and giving them whatever they might want before I ended my turn. Haven't had any crashes since doubling my RAM last night, though (before that, I got a message about virtual memory being low).

 

[vonGazza]

I too have choppy cutscenes but only for the Wonders. NVidia FX 5700 and yes I have the latest drivers (81.85) so they unfortunately are not the solution. I thought I caught a glimpse of a message in the top left of the screen which said 'unable to play sound file' when one of the wonder movies was playing but didn't have time to note it down properly.

I am running the game at max resolution if that helps.

Hope this gets fixed, it is a major annoyance in what otherwise seems to be an excellent game so far.

 

[deanis73]

I installed the new bink32.dll file, and I downloaded an older version of my graphics driver (this for an nVidia FX 5200 128 MB). Check out http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137370 for details on which one. These two together seemed to fix both my cutscene choppiness and general slow performance (and the occasional crash later in the game). Hope this works for you!

 

[vonGazza]

Many thanks for the suggestion deanis73! I'll hopefully get chance to rollback my driver later this weekend and see if it works.

Maybe the official 'help' page should be updated to say - "Make sure you are NOT using the latest drivers for your video card. 90% of these problems are caused by gamers doing the right thing!"

 

[Dealll]

Whenever i build a wonder, the movie plays real smooth, but the audio skips like crazy. All the other, music, amb, units audio plays totally smooth behind the skipping wonder audio. I have turned music all the way off and use winamp while i play civ4. Winamp doesnt skip.

Definately something inside civ4 is causing this. If it was my hardware, winamp would be skipping indefinately.


BTW vonGazza, most people recommend that if your hardware isnt acting up, Dont upgrade the drivers. Second, look at the list of issues the patch will fix, is it a problem youre having? If not, leave it.