I would try the -ni option after seeing that message. Aside from that, there are things you can do to make sure your computer is optimized for multimedia playback. The details are here under "Smooth Playback:"
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/747/
The section under Smooth Playback talks about why and how to use
/proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq
This info is from
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/mtrr.html :
~~
It is VERY recommended to check if the MTRR registers are set up properly, because they can give a big performance boost.
Do a cat /proc/mtrr:
--($:~)-- cat /proc/mtrr
reg00: base=0xe4000000 (3648MB), size= 16MB: write-combining, count=9
reg01: base=0xd8000000 (3456MB), size= 128MB: write-combining, count=1
It's right, shows my Matrox G400 with 16MB memory. I did this from XFree 4.x.x, which sets up MTRR registers automatically.
If nothing worked, you have to do it manually. First, you have to find the base address. You have 3 ways to find it:
1.
from X11 startup messages, for example:
(--) SVGA: PCI: Matrox MGA G400 AGP rev 4, Memory @ 0xd8000000, 0xd4000000
(--) SVGA: Linear framebuffer at 0xD8000000
2.
from /proc/pci (use lspci -v command):
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc.: Unknown device 0525
Memory at d8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable)
3.
from mga_vid kernel driver messages (use dmesg):
mga_mem_base = d8000000
Then let's find the memory size. This is very easy, just convert video RAM size to hexadecimal, or use this table:
1 MB = 0x100000
2 MB = 0x200000
4 MB = 0x400000
8 MB = 0x800000
16 MB = 0x1000000
32 MB = 0x2000000
You know base address and memory size, let's setup MTRR registers! For example, for the Matrox card above (base=0xd8000000) with 32MB ram (size=0x2000000) just execute:
echo "base=0xd8000000 size=0x2000000 type=write-combining" > /proc/mtrr
Not all CPUs have MTRRs. For example older K6-2 (around 266MHz, stepping 0) CPUs don't have MTRRs, but stepping 12 does (execute cat /proc/cpuinfo to check it).
~~
For me, the skipping lessens if I use the x11 driver, but after setting up the mtrr you should be watching these files with perfect quality.