Windows 7: Video playback is jerky

Motherboard - Asus P5N-D
CPU - QuadCore Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2400 MHz (9 x 267)
Memory - 8 Gb (3.326 Gb in XP)
Video - NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT (256)
I am currently triple booting XP Pro 32 bit, Vista Home Premium 64 bit and Windows 7 RC1 (Build 7100) 64bit.
Experience Index is 5.2 in Vista, 5.3 in Windows 7.
I have an ATI TV Wonder HD600 PCIe tuner card. I can record TV in all three operating systems. I have Cyberlink PowerCinema 6 and the latest version of SageTV. PowerCinema will not work in Windows 7. Windows Media Player *does* work but records in some god-awful format which can only be viewed in Windows 7. SageTV works in all three OS's. Since Sage works in all three and records in mpeg2 format, I'll use it for my example. Using Media Player Classic or GOM for playback, any of the recordings made in any of the operating systems will play back flawlessly in Windows XP.
In Vista or Windows 7 the video playback is jerky although the sound doesn't seem to be affected.
Also just *watching* TV in Vista or Windows 7 is jerky. By Jerky I mean the screen will freeze up momentarily and then jump ahead to where it should be, although the sound continues normally.
So what do I need to be looking at? My Vista OS was originally 32 bit, but I still had the jerkiness problem. I actually thought upgrading it to 64 bit might cure it, but it didn't.
Interestingly the playback is flawless in Windows XP which only accesses about 3.5 Gb of my 8 Gb total.
Are the newer OS's just that much more bloatware?

Windows 7 actually is faster, more responsive and overall better on my really slow P4 1.5 MHz machine. XP on it is good. 7 is great.

On my P4 3.6 machine in my specs, I watch and record TV perfectly in all OS, to avi uncompressed or using the lossless huffy codec.

I recommend that you get a copy of iuVCR and give that a try. That software is simple to use and has many options. It also captures to most formats.

Other than that, check the drivers you are using. Maybe you could find an alternative for Vista and/or 7 than whatever you are using now.

It sounds like a problem with your graphic drivers and\or decoder. What version of NVidia drivers are you running? Are you using the default decoders?

I downloaded iuVCR. It looks like it's for the BT848 & BT878 chips only. I'm having no problems capturing though. Just playing back.

I just let Windows find the drivers. I'll go to the NVidia site and make sure I have the latest.

I also had jerky video when I "upgraded" from Vista 32 (long story, but it turns out that I needed to do a fresh install despite what the compatibility test said--the first of many frustrations with Windows 7). My advice to investors: sell Microsoft stock short; if Windows 7 is any indicator, the company is heading for hard times.

Okay, rant aside... the default drivers "worked" but with crackling audio and jerky video. I updated both the sound drivers (Creative X-Fi 5.1) and the video drivers (nVidia GeForce 9500 GT... they were beta but explicitly for Win 7). The driver update didn't help at all.

What did help? In desperation, I disabled my antivirus (Eset ESS)... and the problem went away. Hmmm. Went to Eset's site, and they had newer version available (that somehow my installed version didn't detect), so I downloaded that and installed it. Problem now appears to be gone. Moral of the story? Check your antivirus vendor for an update.

But of course, we're talking about a Windows operating system. Your mileage may vary, and I may find myself back in the same garage tomorrow morning.

At any rate, I hope this helps.

Wow this makes no sense at all. You successfully figured out that your antivirus was bonkered but you blame Microsoft instead?

How could you be so intelligent to actually repair your problem but at the same time, not understand who is to blame?

Very glad for you and good work anyhow.

torrentg:

If you read carefully, my initial complaint was that my Vista System could not be upgraded EVEN THOUGH the Windows 7 compatibility check said everything was fine. Had I spent $199 at Best Buy for the "Upgrade Only" version (which, at this writing, was the only version being sold at my local Best Buy stores), I would be furious. As it was--from decades of having Windows operating systems--I had already stuck essential data on something other than the C: drive. Most people don't and a complete reinstall would be painful. The Apple ads hit it right on the head: if you're going to go Windows 7, you might as well consider switching OS's.

Now my frustration extends to the issue of jerky video and clicking sound. Go ahead Google "Windows 7 jerky video"--see how many hits there are?! Obviously not a rare and isolated problem. Now go to Microsoft's knowledge base. Search for it... and try every single one of their recommendations. Not much help, huh? So how many hours did you waste uninstalling drivers, and reinstalling them and not get anywhere? Pretty horrific.

So my last negative comment: your mileage may vary, etc.? Because I know that this fix seems to have fixed my problem, but I haven't yet shut down my machine. And in the past, Windows problems magically reappear; it's gotten worse now that Microsoft Updates are prevalent.

Why am I so negative on Microsoft's ability to fix issues? Because they went through an entire OS release (Vista 32/64) without fixing something as simple (and necessary) as Explorer's inability to sort a directory by Date Modified in date order!

It is only the user community (like this site) that drives the boat forward. Microsoft itself is almost too slow to react to be useful.

Your sound issue is caused by throttling of the cpu in the motherboard bios settings.

Update your bios and/or disable throttling (aka Cool N Quiet.)

Your issue is with your motherboard manufacturer.

Stop hating on Microsoft's product. They have done a supreme job with Windows 7.

It's not the antivirus software. After shutting down my workstation last night, and starting it up again this morning... the jerky video and clicking sound was back with a vengeance.

But the solution is really quite simple: wait. After just leaving my workstation running for about 45 minutes, I can start a video with no problems whatsoever. So I tested this theory (it's frustrating how many hours I wasted on this "simple" update of a fricken Microsoft Operating system). Upon boot, if one looks at the Task Manager performance graph, you will notice that occasionally there will be "spikes" of the CPU where it hits 100% for a very short time even if you're not do anything. What process is causing this? I have no idea, because the processes list doesn't show anything (other than System Idle) ever going anywhere close to 100%. But those spikes coincide with the jerky video and audio.

Even if you don't do anything (don't run applications), those spikes just keep hitting. But about 45 minutes of runtime, eventually the spikes disappear and voila, the system seems to run swimmingly. Yes, I think this is bogus, but since the behavior is very reproducible, I think I can live with it. I'll wake up in the morning, turn on my machine, and go and drink coffee until Windows 7 settles down.

torrentg: yes, of course I've upgraded the BIOS. Of course I've upgraded all my drivers. None of that seems to help. It COULD be that the vendors for some of my hardware have not yet fixed issues--but I am running the latest drivers available. Cool and Quiet is an AMD feature, playing with Intel's SpeedTest features (the equivalent) didn't seem to have an effect on the observed behavior.

My suspicions are that:

(1) It's audiodg (lots of technical reasons why it could be)--perhaps caused by Creative's DSP is not 100% compatible with Windows 7. I AM running their latest drivers though, but since AudioDG runs in user space (whereas in XP, it's in the kernel), the audio processes could conceivably have a deleterious effect on application performance.

(2) It's whatever architecture Microsoft is using to "boot faster." I am very happy with how fast it takes to go from login to desktop... but perhaps that's just an illusion. Perhaps the traditional startup sequence is still running in the background... but now that it's playing second fiddle to the "user experience" it takes much longer to finish: 45 minutes?

Of course, this is all speculation.

This has been the most frustrating upgrade I've ever experienced. Much worse than XP to Vista. I upgraded in an attempt to get rid of Vista's well-documented slow network share access performance and it's idiotic can't sort by date modified issue. Windows 7 does make this better (although the infamous green progress bar still crawls across explorer when you're accessing network shares, at least explorer is not non-responsive until it finishes). The 45 minute startup time may convince me to go ahead and roll back to XP (Vista, though usable, had its issues--but not worth having to reinstall XP; now, since I have to reinstall anyway, I'd go all the way back to XP which seems to have the best overall performance). For now, I'll give Windows 7 a try.

But my advice to people: don't try upgrading to 7. It's more hassle than it's worth if you like watching videos.