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Video playback laggy since installed SSD drive

4K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  toastm4n 
#1 ·
Hi guys

I got an ASUS G73JW laptop which came with a 5300 RPM HDD.

I recently saw a good deal on SSD so I bought it (Kingston SSDNow V200 64GB)

I installed it on the available SATA slot, reinstalled Windows 7 (64-Bit), installed all the drivers, ran the Windows Update, installed the latest K-Lite Codec Pack, computer is pretty fast, boots fast.

Everything is good except when I play videos it lags and have some hiccups often (every ~5 min or so)
I tested with AVIs or 720p MKVs, sometimes it's ok for 15-30 minutes but eventually it will lag for 2-3 seconds and interrupt the playback - this never happened with my previous HDD, it was smooth 100% of the time. (I used the computer a lot of watching videos)

Yesterday I played a movie from an external 1-TB HDD an my computer completely froze (my computer never froze since I purchased it - so it was the first time ever:confused:)

I would like to know if you guys can suggest anything, I hope it's the K-Lite Codec Pack which is at fault (while I doubt it - I never had problems with it before).

Any suggestion are highly appreciated.
Thanks
Toast:eek:
 
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#2 ·
The freezing: I'd strongly suggest checking your Memory, run MemTest86 just to be sure you didn't knock a DIMM out of it's socket. This is a very common problem with laptop computers because they get moved a lot. Those little DIMMS actually wiggle out quite easily.

The playback: Issues might be resolved if you install TRIM drivers, SSD's and conventional HDD's are managed in a much different manner. Considering you're running a fresh isntall the disk managment protocol from your previous HD cannot (obviously) interfear. If you've never heard of TRIM drivers it's worth researching.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

1. Memtest, your problem might be unrelated to your SSD.
2. Install TRIM drivers...

Somethign else to note, It might be something more simple. Consider the media player your using.
VLC is still buggy in some places, but I use it for everything. Plus it'll play literally anything.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Good Luck.
 
#3 ·
Thanks for the suggestion unixman.
Freezing only happened once during video playback, I would imagine that if my RAM was at fault I would experience many more incidents. I will still check my RAM with that app you suggested.
As for the TRIM, that's interesting, I will try that and report.
Thanks again.
 
#4 ·
I would suspect the codec pack myself. I recommend that they never be used since they install a lot of useless junk and often codecs that are inferior. The bad ones can get higher priority than the good ones already there and lead to problems.

Unless you play a lot of videos with extremely weird codecs, it might be better to install just those you need. There are tools available to scan video files and tell you what codec it uses. Some even give you download links for those codecs.

Tools For Analyzing System and Media Codecs:

GSpot Information Appliance (video codec identification utility)

CodecInstaller (System codec and media analyzer and installer)

InstalledCodec (Shows all codecs, enable/disable)

VideoInspector (codec and media analysis)

MediaInfoGUI (Shows format/codecs/properties of audio and video files)

Sherlock (checks audio and video files, codecs versions, broken codecs, etc.)

AVIcodec (media analyzer)

============================================

No additional drivers are needed for modern SSD's. Though true that they have a very limited number of writes per sector before that sector becomes unusable (100's for SSD's and maybe millions for mechanical drives) and the drive space decreases, the drive's electronics handle the allocation of space in such a way that writes are distributed evenly over the available space so that no sector gets written more than any other, increasing the lifespan of the drive. That is all built into the drive and need not be considered by a user. But most certainly you DO NOT want to ever defrag SSD's.

Take a look at your other processes in Task Manager when this happens to see if anything is using more CPU than it should. Be sure to run players at Above Normal CPU priority, too, to prevent interruptions by other processes. That setting is sometimes found in the player's own settings, or you can use something like Process Lasso (Prio on XP) to enforce priorities that you assign. You can put less important processes to run always at Idle priority, too.

What player are you using? GOM Player is a good player, Media Player Classic, Daum Pot Player, UMPlayer, Haihaisoft Universal Player, SplashPlayer, and many more are ones that I have installed and use successfully. Some, like VLC, seem to use much more CPU than others.
 
#5 ·
Hi Elvandil thx for the response.

Good info regarding SSD drives, much appreciated.

Say, I remember that Win7 auto defrags drives, is that true? If so, do you know how to disable it?

So for the player I use, k-lite comes with Media Player Classic, I've used it for years and never had problems, in fact I always used k-lite without a problem, maybe it's their new version (4.0.0.0) which is at fault, I will try to remove it completely and install the codecs I need manually.

Thanks again
Toast
 
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