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Author Topic: Hickups on playing MP3s  (Read 1290 times)

PaulSinnema

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Hickups on playing MP3s
« on: January 21, 2007, 03:14:09 am »

Hi,

I've downloaded and installed the latest MC12 (12.0.147) and it's predecessor and found both to have hickups during play. The hickups only occur when my computer is more busy than usual. We're using a Compaq D510 (Pentium 4 - 2Ghz) with 512Mb Memory, so not realy state of the art hardware, but it never has been a problem with previous versions of MC. I guess something changed in the playroutine causing the hickups.

A typical example of when a hickup appears is when someone is calling my Skypephone which is situated on the same PC. We know in advance when someone is trying to reach us, because MC start to hickup the moment Skype become active (even before the phone rings).

Paul.
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jkrzok

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Re: Hickups on playing MP3s
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2007, 10:11:55 am »

I too notice skips or hiccups in play. File type being played doesn't seem to matter. It seems to happen when I move files into my auto-import folder within Windows (it doesn't seem to happen if I rename/move within MC. But I do this much less frequently). I also see it occasionally when a page is loading in Opera.

I see this in 151 and 147 but didn't see it in 139.
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JimH

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Re: Hickups on playing MP3s
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2007, 10:21:53 am »

Over-eager virus checker?
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Magic_Randy

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Re: Hickups on playing MP3s
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2007, 10:44:12 am »

My guess is you are getting skips/hickups when you get high CPU utilization.  You could see this if you open task manager and go to the performance tab.  When you launch Opera, you will probably see a CPU spike. 

One thing you could try is to increase the buffering.  The default buffering is 0.5 seconds.  This should be enough, but you can increase all the way up to 5.0 seconds.  I think you will see the problem go away if you make an increase here, but the downside is the responsive to change.  If you're mostly listening, this is not an issue.   The easiest way to test it is to set it to maximum (5.0) seconds and see if it helps.  If that works I would back it off to 1-2 seconds.

The option is here:
Options-->Playback-->Output Mode Settings

BTW: I don't know if you have to close MC and restart it for this option to take effect.
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jkrzok

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Re: Hickups on playing MP3s
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2007, 10:04:19 pm »

I think my problem may be due to installing a program called Process Tamer. I installed it a day before 147. I've diabled it for most of today with nary a skip, so far.
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