My imac 27 i7 lags when playing videos

[whoisrhp]

Hey guys my imac seems to be lagging when I play videos of movies or soap operas that I downloaded online. What do you think the cause of this could be? I play the videos in VLC, and I should be having a lag free smooth video play back right? I think im still within the 14 day period, should I call apple and request a replacement? Does anyone know a fix for the problem?

Also my HDD is always running at a constant 59 ~ 60 c when just watching videos / movies is this within normal temperatures?

 

[thiagos]

Hey guys my imac seems to be lagging when I play videos of movies or soap operas that I downloaded online. What do you think the cause of this could be? I play the videos in VLC, and I should be having a lag free smooth video play back right? I think im still within the 14 day period, should I call apple and request a replacement? Does anyone know a fix for the problem?

Also my HDD is always running at a constant 59 ~ 60 c when just watching videos / movies is this within normal temperatures?

I have a feeling you might have a Seagate hard drive. Go to About this Mac and check if you do. If you do indeed have it, have apple swap your machine or the hard drive.
I think you might have a hard drive issue, it can cause long pauses and errors when reading data as well as data loss.

 

[whoisrhp]

I have a feeling you might have a Seagate hard drive. Go to About this Mac and check if you do. If you do indeed have it, have apple swap your machine or the hard drive.
I think you might have a hard drive issue, it can cause long pauses and errors when reading data as well as data loss.

thanks bro. but i actually ordered the 2tb HD and its a hitachi. I even got 8gb of ram I don't know why my computer would be lagging while playing such simple movies.. It's really annoying I would think quadcore could handle simple movies? Was I just unlucky and got a bad imac?

Also has anyone else had issues with there apple remote? mine stopped working and I had to restart my computer to get it in sync again. =/ does this happen often?

 

[DarwinOSX]

Apple has a knowledge base article on that remote issue. Don't remember the details but you can do a search for it.

Laggy video is no reason to return an entire computer. It's a software issue somewhere. If you are using VLC make sure it is the latest version and delete the preferences. Also what type of video are you playing....mov, .avi...etc.

 

[whoisrhp]

Apple has a knowledge base article on that remote issue. Don't remember the details but you can do a search for it.

Laggy video is no reason to return an entire computer. It's a software issue somewhere. If you are using VLC make sure it is the latest version and delete the preferences. Also what type of video are you playing....mov, .avi...etc.

they are avi files i only notice the lag when the videos are long. I don't notice them in short 5 minute Music Videos.

*also I didn't change any of the VLC preferences. =/ hmm.

 

[mikey.f]

This might be a stupid question. But where/how did you download your vids? If legally from e.g. iTunes Store,... then it's a problem. If it's downloaded off an illegal source, do you think it could be actually a problem with the video itself?

What lag is it you're experiencing? Like, does audio and video get out of sync? Or is the vid stopping every now and then?

Also, try installing Perian, the drivers will let you play your vids in QuickTime. If the issue keeps happening in QT, I reckon there's a problem with the video files.

 

[whoisrhp]

I went into system preferences > energy saver , and unchecked put the hard disk to sleep when possible and it seems to have helped with the lag issue, I need to test it more though. Does everyone else have the Put the hard disk to sleep when possible option unchecked as well? I think it comes checked as default because I never touched it.

 

[Lifequest]

Sorry to bring this back up- didn't want to start a new thread.

My iMac i7 860 2.8GHZ
8GB 1033MHz RAM
512MB GPU
HD (if important not sure) - 650GB+ free.
Vendor: Intel
Product: 5 Series Chipset
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported

ST31000528ASQ:

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)

MAC OSX 10.6.7

It can't handle a full HD playback that I've now rendered from Adobe After Effects. This is a .mov file playing on quicktime.
I tried VLC player (latest version) and it still skips frames and freezes for seconds at a time.

Activity monitor shows: CPU at 92.7% idle
RAM: 1.36GB free and 4.75GB inactive
I can't see why I should be lagging playing a simple 30second clip.

Could anyone help me? Or share some light on this matter?