Wonder Movie Choppiness

[Japanrocks12]

The wonder movies (with the exception of Stonehenge and the Oracle) never run smoothly for me. They're very choppy and sometimes they will freeze altogether. I've even run them outside the game with my Bink player and the same problem occurs and Bink crashes.

How do I fix this problem?

 

[dshirk]

Try setting Bink16Bit = 1 or BinkInterlace = 1 in the Civ4Config ini file (requires the Civ patch or later)

 

[jayeffaar]

It's not like playing video in a tiny window is a demanding new task for computers. The game plays pretty smoothly on my PC, except for the glitchy videos that so many of us seem to be getting. Anybody knows what's making the Bink player so finicky in this game?

 

[Aramda Master]

It's not like playing video in a tiny window is a demanding new task for computers. The game plays pretty smoothly on my PC, except for the glitchy videos that so many of us seem to be getting. Anybody knows what's making the Bink player so finicky in this game?

Yeah it's pretty choppy for me too.

 

[Olie]

I've also been experiencing these problems.

I had assumed that the later Wonder's videos were choppy due to the game generally slowing down (as more of the map becomes revealed, more units on screen etc.) but after reading this I guess it's a wider problem.

I do not yet have the patch installed, does anyone? And is the problem any different before/after?

(edit - typo)

 

[GamesMan]

I've never once seen a wonder video; they are so choppy, and then just lock up, I usually give up and just close the window. It's pretty anti-climatic to race to get a certain wonder, rub your hands together as you see you built it first and the video "reward" start to come up, and then you get something akin to an old LP, skipping and freezing

 

[Psyringe]

It's not like playing video in a tiny window is a demanding new task for computers. The game plays pretty smoothly on my PC, except for the glitchy videos that so many of us seem to be getting. Anybody knows what's making the Bink player so finicky in this game?

It's not a problem with Bink. The RADTools software (a program that plays Bink movies) can play the movies smoothly.

My guess is that either the game tries to update the main screen (map and UI) while the movie is playing, or that the game starts some processes which it cannot stop for the movie playback (like the process which notifies you of of what is happening elsewhere with text displays), and these processes may eat up enough resources to make video playback choppy. But it's really just a guess.

 

[zerokarma]

so i guess there is no solution to this yet right?

 

[CorruptAssassin]

I dont think so, apparently the patch made the movies run better, but its actually made them run WORSE on my machine. It plays for 1 second, freezes, resumes, freezes, etc.

Its really quite a shame

 

[jdurg]

Turn off Anti-Aliasing in your graphics options if you have it enabled. When I did that, the movies suddenly started playing silky smooth with no problems at all. With the patch, it appears as if the movies and AA just aren't getting along.

 

[CorruptAssassin]

playing the game without AA though is probably worse than playing it with choppy movies

Damn it, all I want from Firaxis is a damn fix to this issue, instead of saying 'its been solved' in the release notes of patch 1.09...

 

[jarcher]

The game generally runs silky smooth for me, especially since the patch. However, the movies have always been terrible.

Frankly, this is a disgrace, and how this wasn't seen in testing is extraordinary (perhaps it was, but time ran out). Modern machines should have no problem running movies. They are not even particularly taxing movies, nor full screen. For goodness sake, anyone remeber those brilliant movies from mechwarrior 2, which ran FULL SCREEN on my beloved 386sx.

As i said at the start of this post, the game runs silky smooth generally and i have enjoyed the game immensely. It's just a shame the movies aren't up to scratch.