Yesterday I tried to watch a big .avi movie (1.4GB) for the first time on my laptop. I never noticed any problems when I watched small movies such as those of comparable size on Youtube. But with the movie of yesterday I noticed that my sound is lacking and hitching, especially when there is a lot of action going on.

Strange enough this problem occurs with all media players (Mplayer, VLC, banshee, etc).

The specs of my computer are good enough for sure. (Playing movies with my laptop and Windows was never a problem.) And I always thought that I installed all desired software (codes, opengl, videodrivers, etc).

Does anyone have a idea what my problem is?

Regards,
Bob

Throughput. Let's stick with mplayer.
Try mplayer -vo help
That lists all the video formats possible on your box - xvid, opengl, sdl etc.). My laptop (ATI card) wouldn't cut the mustard on anything but sdl. It defaults to xvid, iirc.
Next, mplayer -ao help
and do the same for audio.

Ive listed the output below. But what do you want me to do with it?


MPlayer SVN-r29237-4.4.1 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
Available video output drivers:
xmga Matrox G200/G4x0/G550 overlay in X11 window (using /dev/mga_vid)
mga Matrox G200/G4x0/G550 overlay (/dev/mga_vid)
tdfxfb 3Dfx Banshee/Voodoo3/Voodoo5
3dfx 3dfx (/dev/3dfx)
xv X11/Xv
vdpau VDPAU with X11
x11 X11 ( XImage/Shm )
xover General X11 driver for overlay capable video output drivers
gl X11 (OpenGL)
gl2 X11 (OpenGL) - multiple textures version
dga DGA ( Direct Graphic Access V2.0 )
sdl SDL YUV/RGB/BGR renderer (SDL v1.1.7+ only!)
fbdev Framebuffer Device
fbdev2 Framebuffer Device
svga SVGAlib
caca libcaca
v4l2 V4L2 MPEG Video Decoder Output
directfb Direct Framebuffer Device
dfbmga DirectFB / Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550
xvidix X11 (VIDIX)
cvidix console VIDIX
null Null video output
xvmc XVideo Motion Compensation
mpegpes MPEG-PES to DVB card
yuv4mpeg yuv4mpeg output for mjpegtools
png PNG file
jpeg JPEG file
gif89a animated GIF output
tga Targa output
pnm PPM/PGM/PGMYUV file
md5sum md5sum of each frame


MPlayer SVN-r29237-4.4.1 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
Available audio output drivers:
oss OSS/ioctl audio output
alsa ALSA-0.9.x-1.x audio output
esd EsounD audio output
pulse PulseAudio audio output
jack JACK audio output
nas NAS audio output
sdl SDLlib audio output
openal OpenAL audio output
mpegpes DVB audio output
v4l2 V4L2 MPEG Audio Decoder output
null Null audio output
pcm RAW PCM/WAVE file writer audio output

I just worked through them. For video, try x11, sdl, opengl, and the one mayching your video card. For audio, I'd suggest alsa sdl, pulse and jack as your first efforts. The line goes

mplayer -vo sdl -ao jack <file>

You can make your choice permanent in a config file. READ the man page.