Why can I not play HD Video,,,, Ever?

This is the bane of my existence.
System 1: HP DV4
AMD Turion 2.1GHz proc
4GB DDR2 Ram
WD Scorp BLue 250GB HDD
A really good dedicated Graphics card, could play Civ 4 at fairly high settings, 1280x800 no problems.

Now I tried to play the ESiR rip of Saving Private Ryan, no juice.
I tried it in Win 7, nothing, I installed Win 7 RC1, still couldn't do it.
I'm talking a new installation, no software, just VLC.

NOW, the funny thing is my friend, on his Black Macbook (2.4GHz, 4GB ram, bad Intel Int GFX) can play blueray rips PERFECTLY, while doing a million other things.

SO I buy his laptop because he upgraded, install a fresh copy of OSX, and guess what? It still dosen't play (although the hardware is 1000x better than HP's) I don't understand why VLC uses ALL of my CPU, and when I close EVERYTHING, and restart finder 8 times because I can't close it, the thing still stutters. I can watch stuff, but it will freeze on a frame and stutter.

It's not just private ryan, I have Terminator 2, 3, 1, and a lot of other movies.

I've tried quicktime, Realplayer, Nice Player, VLC, WMP, ect.

My friend says it might be the MKV file container, because when he was playing them on his brand new uMBP, they went fine, but he couldn't skip through the video without it glitching (pause and unpause to shake off the 'blocks'). I've never really been able to skip through a video without it hanging or getting the 'blocks'. Even a 10mb AVI sometimes gives me issues. He said it was a bad rip because he couldn't freely 'scroll' through the video.

Could this be some hardware issue?
720P AVIs do seem fine, but everyone puts their stuff into MKV. I thought MKV was better than AVI.

If I convert these into H.264 or something, will that solve the problem?

 

Have you tried a mkv splitter instead?

 

What program was your friend using to play the video files?

Also, try using Media Player Classic Homecinema to play the files if you are running Windows and MPlayer for OSX.

 

Or perhaps KMPlayer-- I watch .mkv's perfectly fine all the time on my computer.

 

Yea, i noticed that to. The funny thing is when I boot into windows, and use GOM Player to play the same exact video file it will be perfectly fine, no stuttering, no freezing glitching when i fast fowrad and back track.

 

The answer is pretty simple: VLC is not optimized yet for 1080p.

You need to run Windows for really high bit-rate.

Download this codec and use WMPC: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Matroska_Pack.htm

You will have no more problems playing MKV files.

 

Quit using VLC...

http://www.plexapp.com/

http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/

 

It's 720P, all of them.
No 1080P.
I use VLC because it is probably one of the best on the Mac, QT dosen't play half my stuff and I googled and googles but there was no good VLC alternative.

In Win 7 I used VLC, WMP, and MPlayerC with all those codecs...

I'd boot into XP but my BootCamp dosent work, when I install XP the computer reboots, and then when it boots into the XP Partition I get a 'disk error' so I have to pull the plug. I've tried it 9 times with 5 different XP Discs.. No dice.


He was using VLC and Nice Player.

 

I don't understand. Are you saying that in Windows 7, you can play all MKV files without problems, but in OS X, you can't even play 720p?

A functional 2.4GHz MB will have absolutely no problems playing H.264 encoded 720p with VLC. You wouldn't even need to configure anything. Check your CPU temperature and activities because something might be faulty with the hardware.

 

In windows 7 I can't play any 720P except for certain movie that are in the AVI container.
Windows 7 Build 7000
Win 7 Build 7000-A fresh Install
Win 7 RC1
Win 7 RC1 on a fresh install

And OSX.

I can't play these MKV files on anything.
There is no activity, EVERYTHING is closed. Wifi is Off lol. Battery thing is set to max preformance.

I agree that a 2.4 is overkill for simple 720p.
My 6 year old Celeron M 1.6 laptop can play damn 720p.
A $200 netbook can play 720p. Why not a current HP notebook and a Macbook play it?

After my TM backup completes I will reinstall OSX from a freshly DVD, and hopefully it will solve my problem.

If Bootcamp worked I'd try it in that but it is broken.


Also I just tried MPC for OSX it's awesome, I like the skipping feature.
I can't figure out the other one, don't we have front row for that?

 

I think reinstalling MacOSX might be your best bet. MacOSX isn't flawless.

 

OS X isn't the problem. I have had the exact same issues that the OP has had. It is the way that VLC, Quicktime, and other media players are made compared to their windows counterparts. I can run 720, 1080p movies perfectly fine when I bootcamp into Windows XP using GOM Player. However, the same exact movie files when I try to play on VLC, Quicktime (perian) it will stutter and chop up whenever I try to fast forward or rewind. Although I found that MPLayer Extended does a heck of alot better of a job than VLC with the HD video files, than VLC but still chokes whenever I play 1080p files.

 

I was referring to the OSX installation on his laptop. He said that his friend with the same laptop with a previous OSX installation played 1080P movies fine. When he reinstall OSX, it didn't work well.