Observation on movie stutter

[Underseer]

I went and installed the RAD Video Tools so I could watch the wonder movies outside the game (since I can't watch them in the game due to the stutter).

When I did, I noticed something odd: even out of the game, those Bink videos are very susceptible to stutter. If anything else is going on, I get stutter in the video playback. Just moving the player's window around while a movie is playing causes stutter. I even got stutter once from closing another window (a paused MP3 player) while a movie was playing. This when Civ 4 is not running at all (for the record, all I had running at the time was Firefox, an MP3 player, an explorer window and the Bink player itself).

This leads me to suspect that the problem is with the Bink codec, with the encoding of the movie files themselves, or with my video card drivers (I'm using nVidia's latest 81.95 drivers), but not necessarily with the game itself.

System specs since I know someone will ask:

• AMD Sempron 2400+ (1.67 GHz) --VIA 5.00A mobo chipset drivers
• 1 GB PC2700 DDR RAM
• nVidia GeForce 6600GT (AGP) -- 81.95 drivers
• Hercules Game Theater XP sound card -- 6.09 drivers
• Windows XP SP2 (all updates installed)

I usually have McAfee VirusScan 8.0i running when the game is running.

 

[CroakerJoe]

I remember a year or two back (maybe more) I had another game with the exact same problem with Bink video. I remember downloading Rad Tools and doing *something* that fixed it but I can't remember what it was.. I'm wracking my brain trying to remember.

I will download Rad Tools again tomorrow and fiddle with it - maybe it will refresh my memory.

Athlon Xp 2800+
1 GB PC2700 DDR Ram
Radeon 9700 Pro, 128 MB - 5.2 drivers
SB Audigy (latest avail. drivers)
Windows XP Pro SP2

 

[Underseer]

Thanks. Let me know what you discover.

 

[Lunde]

hi
well i have experimented with some of my ati radeon settings and found my own stuttering movie solution.
created a link to the civ4 exe with radlinker and set the full screen anti aliasing to 6x
and the anisotropic filtering to 16x quality
finally the wait for vertical sync to allways on
this is done with the drivers omega 4.12 on my radeon 9600 pro and actually stops the movies from stuttering.......
but this wont work with the latest 5.11 omegas as i get the failed to initialize renderer even with patch 1.09

oh well back to the drawing board firaxis and take 2

 

[Formis6]

I also experimented with playing the wonder movies in Rad Video Tools and found the stuttering occurring there. I have found a more profound, but related, problem, and I am curious if anyone has had similar problems.

Since installing Civ4, not only does sound and video stutter in Civ4, but now sound and video skips in other software as well. Sound and video now skips and stutters in Windows Media Player, Real Player and Quicktime. This occurs regardless of file type (whether I am playing MP3's, WAV's, AVI's, MPGS, etc.) When I play audio CD's they skip and stutter. Also, my Cyberlink PowerDVD player skips when I play DVD's. Thsi all started after installing Civ4.

I have tried uninstalling Civ4...problem persisted. I have updated all of my audio and video drivers, as well as codecs. Problem continues to persist. I have purchased software to repair/rebuild my Windows registry...problem still persists.

Has anyone else experienced the problem of the stuttering spreading beyond Civ4? Does anyone have any ideas on how to solve this problem? I am particularly frustrated because I have a rather expensive THX certified surround sound and video system installed which has been rendered more or less useless because of the skipping/stuttering problem. I am on the verge of reformatting the hard-drive and reinstalling everything (except Civ4) from scratch...but I would rather that be a last resort solution.

 

[Egress1]

.... I am on the verge of reformatting the hard-drive and reinstalling everything (except Civ4) from scratch...but I would rather that be a last resort solution.

Ack! Before you go about reformatting and reinstalling all of your software try removing your sound and video cards using the Hardware Device Manager then run the hardware manager to reinstall them.

Good luck.

 

[Underseer]

Formis, you seem to have problems. I do not have problems with other kinds of movie files and sound files. I don't get the same stutter problem with MPGs, MP3, etc. in Windows Media Player nor Media Player Classic (comes with the K-Lite codec pack and I use it to listen to RealMedia Internet radio). For me the problem seems to be limited to the Bink videos.

 

[Zanmato]

The movies in Civ4 skip wildly. I too installed the Bink Player and played them from there and they played perfectly fine. Didn't realize they had sound too until I played them thru Bink. No problems with any other media player or video formats. Just occurs in Civ4 for me, tried everything. In my previous installation of the game, the movies played fine in one run then sometimes would skip in another run. Seems very tempermental to me. Tried swapping the Binkw32.dll with another game, Nexus - The Jupiter Incident which had version 1.6 but Civ refused to launch.

Using nVidia FX5200 128mb (latest drivers), Win2k Pro, onboard sound (SoundMax), AMD XP 2.1Ghz, ASUS A7V8X-X MB, 1Gb RAM.

Cheers,
Rob
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