Video Issues

[gericson03]

Hi. Currently I am experiencing very slow video playback on all kinds of
videos, home movies, n online tv shows. I have done several troubleshooters
and it appears I have a video card whos driver may not be functioning
properly. It is a REALmagic video card, however repeated searches have
yeilded me no proper drivers to reinstall. And driver programs report the
current driver is up to date. Is there a "generic" video driver i can use?
I have an older system with a pentium !!! processor using XP professional.

 

[Mark Adams]

Hi. Currently I am experiencing very slow video playback on all kinds of
videos, home movies, n online tv shows. I have done several troubleshooters
and it appears I have a video card whos driver may not be functioning
properly. It is a REALmagic video card, however repeated searches have
yeilded me no proper drivers to reinstall. And driver programs report the
current driver is up to date. Is there a "generic" video driver i can use?
I have an older system with a pentium !!! processor using XP professional.

Who made the PC? Dell, HP, Sony etc? Go to the appropriate maker's website
and download the video driver for your model computer. If this REALmagic
video card is one that you have added to the system, then go to the REALmagic
website and download the latest driver for that model video card.

Since this is an older PIII system, it probably has limited resources
available. How much RAM is installed? You may have a security suite,
antivirus and/ or antispyware apps that are hogging up the processor and RAM,
causing the video to run "choppy" or slow. Perform a clean boot following
this procedure:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353

Run a video again under clean boot and see how it runs. If it is better, go
back to the System Configuration Utility "Startup" tab and reenable the
checkboxes one at a time and reboot until you find which applications are
bogging down the video. Google if you don't know what the apps are. You
decide if keeping the app is worth the interference with the video playback.

This is a somewhat limited machine; time to start saving for a new one.

 

[Paul]

Hi. Currently I am experiencing very slow video playback on all kinds of
videos, home movies, n online tv shows. I have done several troubleshooters
and it appears I have a video card whos driver may not be functioning
properly. It is a REALmagic video card, however repeated searches have
yeilded me no proper drivers to reinstall. And driver programs report the
current driver is up to date. Is there a "generic" video driver i can use?
I have an older system with a pentium !!! processor using XP professional.

It is possible that device is an MPEG decoder card. The main chip on
the card could be by Sigma Designs. I think the intention, was to
accelerate one particular kind of video playback. It won't accelerate
just any movie. H.264 or Adobe Flash, would not mean anything to
that card. It might also only accelerate video, if you use their
player application. I don't know if the product adds a CODEC to
Windows or not, to make acceleration available to Windows Media Player.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1996_June_6/ai_18359962/

Have a look here. You need to know the *exact* product name, in order
to pick the right driver. Some of the cards are so old, all they have
is Win95 drivers.

http://www.sigmadesigns.com/Support/downloads2.html

Some of the older products of their time, used video overlay. The faceplate
wiring looked like this.

+------------+ +----------> computer_monitor
| | |
^ v ^
Regular RealMagic
Video MPEG
Card Decoder
(ATI
Rage
AGP)

Such a configuration allowed windowed playback. The RealMagic
would add its decoded video output, over top of the original
graphics card image. If no movie is playing, the RealMagic would
pass the original video card through untouched. (Some 3DFX video
cards used a similar feature, and I used to use 3DFX cards like that
for gaming.)

Later models of RealMagic dispensed with overlay mode, and would
have been used to drive a display device directly.

Computer TV
Monitor Set
^ ^
| |
Regular RealMagic
Video MPEG
Card Decoder
(ATI
Rage
AGP)

So how the I/O works on the faceplate of the card, will be
a hint as to the vintage of the card.

Good luck,
Paul

 

[Jose]

Hi.  Currently I am experiencing very slow video playback on all kinds of
videos, home movies, n online tv shows.  I have done several troubleshooters
and it appears I have a video card whos driver may not be functioning
properly. It is a REALmagic video card, however repeated searches have
yeilded me no proper drivers to reinstall.  And driver programs report the
current driver is  up to date.  Is there a "generic" video driver i can use?
  I have an older system with a pentium !!! processor using XP professional.

Has the system ever worked to your satisfaction in the past? If yes,
what do you think changed since then?

Do not rely on any driver programs - rely on yourself. Use Device
Manager to figure out what video driver you are using, then go to the
manufacturers WWW site to see if there is a later version:

To launch the Device Manger console, click Start, Run and in the box
enter:

%SystemRoot%\system32\devmgmt.msc

Are there any yellow ?s in the display and if so, where?

Click OK, expand the Display adapters section, right click your
device, Properties, check the Driver tab to see what your driver
version is and check to see if there is an update.


Reduce the number of questions, any further guessing and and trying
things that might work maybe by supplying more information:

Click Start, Run and in the box enter:

msinfo32

Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select
All, Copy and then paste back here.

There would be some personal information (like System Name and User
Name) or whatever appears to be only your business that you can delete
from the paste.

Reduce the chances of malicious software by running some scans.

Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware
detection programs
then resolve any remaining issues:

Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/
SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/

These can be uninstalled later if desired.

If you are using IDE drives, use Device Manager to verify the transfer
mode of the IDE channels is set to some kind of DMA mode (usually DMA
if available - depends on your hardware) and not the slower PIO
mode.

PIO is the slowest, DMA is the fastest.

This is easy to check and generally easy to fix and the mode would not
have changed by itself, so if it has changed to PIO, change it to DMA
and then figure out why it changed and fix it.

To launch the Device Manger console, click Start, Run and in the box
enter:

%SystemRoot%\system32\devmgmt.msc

Click OK.

Expand the IDE/ATA controller section to see your IDE channels. Right
click each, choose Properties, and for each channel that has an
Advanced Settings tab, determine the Transfer Mode. There are usually
4 channels to check in a desktop, maybe fewer for laptops.

The fastest selection will be some DMA selection (usually: DMA if
available). If it is PIO, change it to DMA.

If you are not sure about what you see post back for help and advice.

Follow this up with a reboot to make sure any changes stick.

What may have caused the change?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472