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Choppy Playback caused by NVIDIA drivers in CS6
Hey everyone,
I’ve encountered a really strange problem that has been driving me absolutely crazy for the past few days and I thought I’d turn to the forums for help.
To keep it simple, playback of any sort of video regardless of codec, frame rate or format, is choppy. Everything basically looks like it was shot at a 1/15th shutter speed.
I’ve changed all of the playback settings a million different ways, turned Mercury Playback to Software Only, and changed the playback and paused resolution to 1/2, 1/4, full, you name it – no change.
In a quest to solve the problem, I re-installed Premiere, rolled back to CS5.5, removed all the hardware from my computer, except for the CPU, RAM and video card, and even did a full restore of a disk image I created when everything was working perfectly when I had first built this machine a year ago.
Nothing worked. As a last-ditch effort, I uninstalled the NVIDIA video drivers (I had recently updated to the 327.23 WHQL drivers and thought that might have been the problem).
To my surprise, that did the trick! For some reason, with the Microsoft Basic Video Driver installed, video of any and all codecs was now running as smooth as butter in Premiere, even with Mercury GPU mode turned off (I actually can’t turn it on since the basic drivers don’t allow it).
Knowing this, I tried rolling back to earlier NVIDIA codecs, 306.xx and up – all of them give me the same choppy playback problem. (I was careful to uninstall & reboot between each one to make sure it was a clean install).
I’d be happy to stay on the Basic Microsoft driver for all the trouble this has caused me, but that driver kind of sucks – it doesn’t take advantage of the full resolution of my monitor, and it would be nice to be able to use the full capability of my GPU.
So my question is: Does anyone know what the underlying problem could be and how to fix it so that I can use my video card properly? I’m thinking there has to be something else going on here since Premiere was basically designed to run on NVIDIA hardware – maybe some sort of software conflict, codec issue or registry problem that I’m not catching.
Another thing: Video plays back perfectly fine in other non-Adobe applications like VLC, regardless of whether or not the NVIDIA codecs installed.
Any ideas would be appreciated!
Here are the specs for my rig (Latest firmware & BIOS have been installed for Mobo & GPU):
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 Pro
CPU: Intel i7 3930k @ stock speeds
RAM: G.Skill 32gb DDR3 @ 1600mHz
GPU: Asus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 OC – 2gb DDR5
PCI: Blackmagic Intensity Pro
PCI: Firewire 400/800 combo card
PSU: OCZ 650w
HDDs:
Boot Drive – OCZ Vertex4 128GB SSD
Media Drives – 2x 4TB RAID 0 arrays, each composed of 2x 2TB WD Black Drives (7200RPM)
Scratch Drive – 2TB Hitachi 7200RPM drive
OS: Windows 8 Professional 64-bit with Media CenterThanks!
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8 Replies
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[Raoul Hernandez] “For some reason, with the Microsoft Basic Video Driver installed, video of any and all codecs was now running as smooth as butter in Premiere”
Have you tried forcing a lower resolution with the NVidia driver?
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Thanks for the suggestion, Alex.
I just tried forcing different resolutions from 720×480 up to the native 1920×1080, with different refresh rates, etc.
No change.
Do you think there’s the possibility of a software conflict? Windows doesn’t report anything, but maybe there are some codecs that are potentially causing issues?
I uninstalled ffdshow for example, but again, nothing changed.
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[Raoul Hernandez] “I just tried forcing different resolutions from 720×480 up to the native 1920×1080, with different refresh rates, etc.
No change. “
The display driver has a 720×480 preset? (Usually the lowest is 640×480. 720×480 is DV signal resolution, haven’t heard of it on a display monitor.)
[Raoul Hernandez] “Do you think there’s the possibility of a software conflict? Windows doesn’t report anything, but maybe there are some codecs that are potentially causing issues? “
It sure is puzzling – not sure about anything else. Also can’t see this to do anything with codecs – display driver doesn’t deal with them, mostly with raw uncompressed data fed to the graphics card with the exception DirectX, OpenGL, etc. functions, and GPU acceleration – which you already ruled out by switching to software-only MPE. Can’t even think of the card being bad given that it’s so selective in its failings. So it’s really puzzling.
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Premiere, so far as I know, only uses DirectShow codecs for AVI (it will use Quicktime for MOV and built-in codecs for other purposes). It’s generally advised that things like k-lite and other codec packs not be installed to avoid conflicts though.
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Hi – I just started using PPCC and made my first export this week. I exported it 4 or 5 times after seeing the jerkiness of my video. I too, from FCP7, did not expect this. And, the dissolves seem to be a jerky end, not the liquid smooth dissolve of FCP7. I’m on a Mac so don’t have that Microsoft matter. What is to be done on a Mac with PPCC jerkiness of image and jerkiness of dissolve? Please assist – the wedding couple will not like the strobiness of their movie.
Thank you! This forum is awesome!
~Jana -
[Alex Gerulaitis] “The display driver has a 720×480 preset? (Usually the lowest is 640×480. 720×480 is DV signal resolution, haven’t heard of it on a display monitor.)”
The Nvidia control panel allowed me to force certain custom resolutions, which I did to test out your suggestion as thoroughly as possible. It’s definitely not a resolution I would use regularly!
So I decided to go nuclear and completely re-install the OS and programs from scratch, checking the playback in Premiere after each driver/program install in an effort to weed out the issue.
The good news is that everything works as it should now (so definitely not a hardware issue). Smooth playback with no issues to report.
Maybe my system just got bogged down by some crappy update or driver that I didn’t notice at the time, or the registry got too messy. Hopefully the problem won’t come back, but if it does, I’ll try to pay closer attention to what might have caused it and post the solution!
Thanks to everyone who offered ideas!
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Hi Jana!
Maybe you should create your own separate post for your question. The underlying problem for your choppy playback seems to be different from mine and the headline of my thread might prevent you from getting the help that you need.
Good luck!
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Congrats Raoul!
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