Time to work on stuttering video and audio bug

[gunnergoz]

OK, video driver updates seem to be helping me with my nVidia 5700-256MB/P4/1GB/Win XP system but now we need to get some help with the stuttering movies and choppy sound problem. This does not seem to be video card related. Any idea of what is going on here?
I have an Audigy 2 s/c with fairly recent drivers, no problems with other s/w.

 

[Chuck75]

I'm having similar stuttering problems with my nVidia 440 card. But I still have the same video drivers that came with the computer I bought two years ago! I had hoped that an update would resolve this problem. Now I'm worried.

Have you found that a driver update fixes the "bread only"
map problem? I sure hope so. I actually thought this was a shortcoming of the game, until other people posted about it.

Also, is it ever wise to refrain from updating your drivers? I want the stuttering and the bread-only map to stop, but I don't want the game to crash on me!

 

[gunnergoz]

I have not had the "bread" problem except when I played with my nVidia utility program and changed the settings to "performance" instead of "quality." That was a mistake it turns out...the game and PC work better on the "quality" setting.
Updating your drivers to the latest certified drivers is a good idea when you are running new software you just got...they likely need it.

 

[ombak]

I have an nVidia GEForce 420 64MB.

I have the most current drivers so I don't have any noticeable problems running the game at the settings it defaults too, except for the stuttering audio mentioned in this thread.

My sound card is a Sound Blaster 5.1 I think.

 

[oxonian2001]

Someone over at Apolyton posted this on the stuttering wonder-movie sound issue:

I had this issue as well. What I did was to change my specific sound driver selection to "stereo" and the Wonder movies played just fine. Worth a shot as it solved not only the Wonder movie issue, but seemingly the lack of volume control I was having with other sound driver selections.

I'm at work, so I can't vouch for the effectiveness of this solution. I have a similar issue, however. If anyone tries this, please post whether it worked or not as well as your system specs.

For the record, I have:
AMD Althon XP 3000+
1 GB RAM
Abit NF7-S mobo w/ AC97 sound
Nvidia 5700LE 256MB videocard

 

[Chuck75]

Hey, Oxonian2001, did this solution end up working? I upgraded my audio drivers last night (also AC97) but it didn't help. I'm not sure what your quoted text means by changing the specific sound driver selection to "stereo." Can you explain?

 

[gunnergoz]

Ditto the "stereo" question...do you mean as opposed to "mono" and/or "Dolby 4.1/5.1, etc.?" All of these sound utilities are a bit different so you need to be more specific in the selections you chose from.

 

[oxonian2001]

I didn't get a chance to try it myself. Please note that I quoted the advice as it appeared (I can't seem to find it again); the ambiguity is not my fault.

However, I believe he meant going into dxdiag and reducing or eliminating sound acceleration. Here's how to do it:

1. Click 'Start' in the lower-left-hand corner of your screen.
2. Click 'Run.'
3. Type 'dxdiag' (without the quotes) into the field and hit Enter.
4. You should get a window with several tabs along the top. Click through the tabs (I'm working from memory, so forgive the vagueness) until you see a screen that has a slider labelled "Hardware Sound Acceleration." Click that slider all the way to the left, and hit "OK."

If this works, you can experiment with the higher sound acceleration settings.

Again, I'm just throwing out an idea here: I don't know that it will help you.

EDIT: I apologize. I forgot that I found this advice over at Apolyton. The original poster clarified:

Where is this at specifically? Under the advanced settings for speakers?

Yes, I think that's where it's at. Wherever all the speaker configuration settings are (EAX, EAX2, etc.) under Audio Options. I was getting really choppy sound under most of the settings I tried, until I selected "stereo" and my Wonder movies ran smooth as silk, and I got volume control back too.

Another poster noted:

I changed my audio settings from "Stereo" to "Use System Config" and it fixed my wonder movie skipping.

However, several others have said that this advice did not work for them.

The original thread is here: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=140767

 

[TownsendVol]

Same problem from me I think.

The sound throughout the intro movie and the entire game skips and studders. I went creative's website and ran the update program and it stated I had the most current drivers.

I have also just upgrade my graphics drivers for the Geforce 3.

Pent. 4 2.0 ghz
Geforce 3 64 mb
512 MB of Ram
Soundblaster Live 5.1
Windows XP

No real graphics problems yet but sound issue has been constant. Sometimes it runs voice overs smooth and music smooth but most of the time it studders and skips.

 

[coolfish]

tried setting hardware accel as outlined above to 0 and that didn't fix it

 

[Stoneage]

Had stuttering wonder movies so I changed the sound option from stereo to EAX2 and the problem disappeared. I have a SB Audigy 2ZS.

 

[coolfish]

Had stuttering wonder movies so I changed the sound option from stereo to EAX2 and the problem disappeared. I have a SB Audigy 2ZS.

tried it, no worky.

 

[coolfish]

so I downloaded the Bink (Radtools) player.. http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm

I was hoping to play the videos standalone, open them up as necessary while playing. I noticed that even using the standalone, the quality of the playback sucked (the audio was fine, but the video stuttered).

I changed the play options in the Bink player to use "Blitting style" DIB Section (best quality, most compatible). The video plays fine in the bink player now.

Perhaps Civ sets the bink player internally to play with a different blitting style or something, which is causing issues. Alas, I can't find the config file for this. it might be hardcoded or something, or in the registry. i'm checking that now..

in any case, temporary thing to do is download the Bink Player and watch the movies outside of Civ 4..

 

[André Alfenaar]

Try this to get rid of the stuttering and clickings sounds:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3239356#post3239356

It worked for me!

 

[coolfish]

Try this to get rid of the stuttering and clickings sounds:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3239356#post3239356

It worked for me!

Since the movies are playable just fine in the Bink player, then this obviously isn't a hardware, or even a system software configuration setting, but rather something specifically with Civ and how it uses the bink files.

 

[BearMan]

Yepp, it's a software bug in Civ allright, however, lowering the hardware acceleration on the soundcard did ALMOST remove all the lag in the wonder movies. but a strange noise appeared in the movies instead , so, they just need to fix this in a patch, so we can all run on normal hardware acceleration...