Improve video playback on my Windows 7 laptop/netbook

September 15, 2010 7:31 AM

Improve video playback on my Windows 7 laptop/netbook

I have a Sony Vaio netbook and I'd like to improve its video playback abilities. Some videos I play will be choppy or out of sync especially if I try to play them full screen.

Here are the stats for my machine:
- Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
- Intel Atom 2GHz
- 2 Gigs of RAM
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator
- SSD internal hard drive
- Using the "High Performance" setting in my Power Options
- Mostly using VLC player

Some limitations are:
- I can't use a SD or USB card to do ReadyBoost. I tried it already and that option isn't available for some reason
- I can't increase the RAM or really any of the specs.

I'm looking for any settings I can adjust to help with speed or video playback. Any suggestions on a better/more lightweight media player

posted by cuando to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

If you copy/paste this "Ways to improve your computer's performance" into the "Help and Support" service in the Start Menu. You'll get a list of possibilities.

You can also go to the Control Panel > Performance and Information Tools. You'll see a list of options on the left hand column. The items on that list are a good place to start.

For example it lists "Adjust Visual Effects." Selecting that gives you a dialog box which lets you choose "Adjust for Best Performance" (or it lets you customize specific settings).
posted by oddman at 7:47 AM on September 15, 2010

Turn off Aero Glass; composting ain't gonna fly with Atom and Intel graphics and a movie.
posted by orthogonality at 8:04 AM on September 15, 2010

Some (older or hardware-incompatible) versions of VLC do not use available hardware video acceleration. Try playing the same video with Windows Media Player (I know ;-), it might work.

It might still be the case that the video is so high-resolution, that the machine cannot play it. Of course playing from a less-resolution source will help in this case. So use standard resolution videos instead of HDTV. Also codecs which produce bigger files but then need less CPU to decode the video also help. So use e.g. DVD movies instead of H.264 encoded MKVs.
posted by oxit at 8:22 AM on September 15, 2010

Aside from making sure your video drivers current, you could also try a Codec Pack which may improve performance on some video formats while using Windows Media. Codec packs usually come with a decent configuration manager, which will allow you to turn off post processing filters and the like. The video quality might end up a little more grainy, but should run noticeably smoother. I'd recommend creating a restore point however before trying any codec packs out there...the one I've linked I had good luck with in the past.
posted by samsara at 8:49 AM on September 15, 2010

I've found in recent times latest version of Windows Media Player plays high complexity / high resolution files with much better performance than VLC - there's been a couple of files which choke VLC but which WMP runs fine. It has something to do with WMP being able to natively use DX for hardware acceleration or something.
posted by xdvesper at 4:15 PM on September 15, 2010