# VLC media player - video breaks up



## DKTaber (Oct 26, 2001)

I recently started using VLC media player instead of WMP. Got a .wav file today from a friend, and when I play it with VLC, about every 4-5 sec. the picture "breaks up" for several seconds, then goes back to normal. By "breaks up", I mean it degrades to what looks like a distorted tile mosaic. It acts like my computer can't process the stream fast enough, but I have a 3.0GHz P4 Win XP machine with 1.5GB RAM and an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 video card with 256MB VRAM. The movie runs fine in WMP.

Anyone have a suggestion as to a setting or what might be causing this?


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## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

What kind of file? You wrote .wav but obviously its not a .wav if its a movie file.

Every once in a while there is some format or bitrate variance that will upset VLC a little. I know the kind of picture breakup you're talking about but I usually only experience that across a network when the signal may be fluctuating once in a while (the same flux usually kills the video playback on other players) so I'm not sure if its the video itself or some regular system interuption.


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## DKTaber (Oct 26, 2001)

fairnooks said:


> What kind of file? You wrote .wav but obviously its not a .wav if its a movie file.
> 
> Every once in a while there is some format or bitrate variance that will upset VLC a little. I know the kind of picture breakup you're talking about but I usually only experience that across a network when the signal may be fluctuating once in a while (the same flux usually kills the video playback on other players) so I'm not sure if its the video itself or some regular system interuption.


You're absolutely right; I misread the extension. It's a .wmv file. Regardless, I guess you're saying it's not a setting or anything I can fix. I will say that this particular file (a very old Lucky Strike ad) is the only one that has been that bad. Other .wmv files will have occasional breakups, but nothing like this one. The thing that bothers me is that if it's the file, why does it play A-OK with WMP? WMP is so bad in other respects (and is the reason I started using VLC) that it pi**es me off that it can make a poor file work while VLC can't.


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