I have a Western digital caviar 540Mb HD, a Vision VL controller and a
66Mhz DX2. I can play all video files from CDrom, MPEG files from HD
and AVI without sound from HD but when I play AVI or MOV files with
audio from HD the sound and picture breaks up and pauses, what is
going on? This kind of problem drives me mad because it is pointless
asking my computer supplier about it and I can't find any real
'problem Guru's'. Can you help?
The first thing that comes to mind is that audio has a data rate too.
Your system will have some data rate max. That could be a few
hundred kb/sec or it could be a couple of MB/sec if your system is
really moving. Whatever it is, to play a video file the system needs
to maintain some data rate for that file. If you then add audio your
asking the computer to pump through a yet higher data rate. If that
get over your systems capabilities than you'll get that video
break-up. Unlike MPEG, most AVI or QuickTime compressors don't
compress audio. That means the audio file could be adding a sizable
data rate demand.