Choppy video in iTunes
[194 byte] By [ingallspod] at [2007-11-11 16:54:49] 
Whenever I try to play one of my TV shows in iTunes, it's very choppy. The sound is fine, just not the video. Is there a setting I can change? I am using the latest version of Quicktime.
# 1 Re: Choppy video in iTunes
Seems to be an unspoken but widely known issue. Do a Google search for "choppy iTunes video" and you'll see that the problem is far from rare.MacVicta at 2007-11-15 16:11:47 >
# 2 Re: Choppy video in iTunes
i bet you have alot of other programs running or something besides itunes that is using alot of your ram...exit all unnessary programs i noticed this when i was running yahoo widget engine or whatever
mizzle at 2007-11-15 16:12:48 >
# 3 Re: Choppy video in iTunes
I have nothing that prevents QuickTime from running smoothly or even Windows Media Player on my PC. Just iTunes.I could have absolutely nothing going but iTunes and still experience the problem. Of course I'm talking about when you extend the movies to full screen, not the little 1 inch box in the bottom left hand corner.
It's a well known issue:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=choppy+iTunes+video
Very first result:
"Yes I agree, iTunes is very choppy when playing back video podcasts as well. If I play the same video in quicktime player it is much smoother."
MacVicta at 2007-11-15 16:13:47 >
# 4 Re: Choppy video in iTunes
No solution here, but I spent 3 hours looking into this, and found that people were diagnosing by moving their video files to an external drive, and the choppiness went away! I tried it, and yep...my chops went away too. Then I found that all the cases of this were people with SATA Drives, and that it doesn't matter which version of iTunes 7.0 you're working on...they all get kerfuffled by these drives. I'm quite sure the Apple folk know about this, and I'm quite sure they aren't fixing it.
You'll see it in quicktime too, I'm afraid. Try loading the file in the quicktime player and you'll prolly see the same thing. Works from a USB drive, or external, but not internal. Sigh.
Between this and the fatal blows to my library every time Apple upgrades iTunes, I'm ready to blow a head pipe. I love my iPod, and I used to love iTunes, but Apple's making it awful hard to keep the faith in my little toyz.
spankeys at 2007-11-15 16:14:52 >
# 5 Re: Choppy video in iTunes
iTunes is not very good at playing video files and has little to do with ram but more to do with the cpu. The problem is more noticeable with H.264 encoded files which seem to take more cpu power to decode. This with the poor video playback in iTunes can cause skipping and jerky video even on a system with a fairly larger processor. If it's not a TV Show from iTunes Store try playing it with the free VLC player which can handle just about anything you throw at it, except protected iTunes video.
Sparkee at 2007-11-15 16:15:52 >
# 6 Re: Choppy video in iTunes
Yeah, I had this problem on my old system, and tried all the "fixes" I could find to no avail. My final verdict: iTunes is a CPU hog. On my new Intel DuoCore2 E6420 video runs fine in iTunes.Oh, and both systems had the same SATA drive, so I would conclude that SATA is not the problem.
So yeah, unless you bought it from the iTunes store, play it using another program.
miniMAMF at 2007-11-15 16:16:51 >
# 7 Re: Choppy video in iTunes
With no other programs running it does the same for me. I think it has to do with your computer's Processing speed. I have 1.86 ghz and well, depending on how small the viewing screen is it works better. That's not the case for any other video players though playing the same videos. iTunes uses a lot of the computer.kylo4 at 2007-11-15 16:17:55 >
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