Logan Cabinet Shop "Podcasts"

[David Turner]

I have been trying to watch the Podcasts but the voice and the pictures never align and everything is jerky. My P.C. is about 5 years old. Is there some software I should download for better performance?

I have not had problems with other u-tube type videos.

David Turner
Plymouth, MI.

[Chris Griggs]

That's strange, what kind of internet connection are you running on? Might try starting them and then pausing them until they completely load. Could be a buffering issue (not that I know what I'm talking about). I've also had that happen on an older PC when I watch podcasts on fullscreen, for whatever reason, I've resolved the issue by watching it in the smaller window; though that's clearly not an ideal solution.

[Jim Matthews]

I view them without interruption, or the video problems you mention.

Intel Atom CPU 330 1.6Ghz
2 GB RAM
Windows 7 32 bit

I expect your PC is suffering from indigestion.

[David Weaver]

I have been trying to watch the Podcasts but the voice and the pictures never align and everything is jerky. My P.C. is about 5 years old. Is there some software I should download for better performance?

I have not had problems with other u-tube type videos.

David Turner
Plymouth, MI.

Might be a flash version issue (are youtube videos flash?) and could be that other folks who chime in have hardware rendering of videos while you may have software rendering (my understanding of that being that several hands are in the CPU cookie jar at one time unlike hardware rendering where the hardware does a lot of the work).

[Jeff Schmidt]

With the video running, right click on the video and click "settings". A little box should come up that is titled "Adobe Flash Player Settings". Make sure that the "Enable Hardware Acceleration" box is NOT checked. I know, I know....one would think that it would help but being enabled can sometimes overload the CPU and cause the problems that you are experiencing.

That said, I find that Blip TV, Vimeo and others require much more juice than YouTube, even the video has the same sampling rate.

[Shaun Mahood]

Try installing iTunes and subscribing to the podcast through there. Might work better and is quite a bit more standard as far as further troubleshooting (I think).

[Jerome Hanby]

I think if my solution to any problem involved apple, I'd just punt. My mantra all during the Microsoft reign of terror is if you aren't reinstalling Windows every six months or so then you just aren't living right.

If you are ready to get rid of the problem maker all together, Linux Mint is a nice installation. I spent several years waiting for a Linux version of that last application I needed (UltraEdit in my case) and once that product was out long enough to be sure it was workable, I dumped Microsoft and never looked back. Wishing now I hadn't been paranoid and set things up as dual boot in case I needed to get back into Windows. It's been six months or so and the need has never arisen.

Just to be sure, I hit the logan site and fired up episode 1, plays great using Firefox on Linux Mint!

[Shaun Mahood]

Realistically, I don't think that the correct solution to a video problem should ever be "completely change operating systems". If David had the knowledge and experience to install and run any version of Linusx successfully, he would never have asked his original question.

[Stuart Tierney]

If you find no joy, click on the 'podcast feed' somewhere or other (long day, I'm not looking again!) and you'll find you can subscribe to the RSS feed, but there are also downloadable videos of the podcasts there.

There are three different files there, mp4 hi and low resolution and m4v.

I don't think they'll actually help you much if your computer can't handle the flash version though, and you're probably better served giving what you've got (computer wise) a spring cleaning.

This laptop is about 3 years old, but runs pretty strong and is clean as a whistle. I did find that with hardware acceleration checked (on!) the video was smoother than using software acceleration (hardware off!) so try both and see what, if any, works best for you.

Seems to me that site is set up with what's easiest for Mac, which probably isn't doing you any favours either.


I'm not expert on any of this really, but this poor little laptop has spent half of the past 3 days grinding it's way through decoding, encoding, editing and uploading video. Stupidly, letting Vista (gasp!) do it's thing it's own way worked better than anything. Nearly painless actually.

Good luck.

(Me, I'll stick with upolading to Youtube. A little bit easier all round methinks. ;) )

Stu.

[Jim Koepke]

I think if my solution to any problem involved apple, I'd just punt. My mantra all during the Microsoft reign of terror is if you aren't reinstalling Windows every six months or so then you just aren't living right.

I guess I'm just not living right…

I like blue skies, not blue screens…

jtk

[Stuart Tierney]

I guess I'm just not living right…

I like blue skies, not blue screens…

jtk

I'm not living right either.

Although I must confess that I did re-install Vista on this thing only a month or so ago.

(HD upgrade. Biiiig upgrade. :) )

Prior to that, only id-ten-t problems, which don't happen often enough to be of note. Always intrigues me as to what on earth folks are doing to get so much trouble out of an complicated, but otherwise dumb piece of technology.

(Also makes me wonder if they should be trusted with anything more dangerous than a plastic spoon...)

Stu.

[David Keller NC]

I have been trying to watch the Podcasts but the voice and the pictures never align and everything is jerky. My P.C. is about 5 years old. Is there some software I should download for better performance?

I have not had problems with other u-tube type videos.

David Turner
Plymouth, MI.

If you wish to solve this, you'll need to provide a couple of pieces of basic information:

1) What is your average internet download speed. This is easy to test using the Internet Speed Test site (there are others out there as well): http://speedtest.net/

2) How much ram do you have in your system (access the "Control Panel>System")

3) Finally, press "ctrl-alt-del" keys simultaneously, and bring up the Windows Task Manager. In it you will see several tabs. Access the "applications" tab first. You should see nothing but internet explorer running. If anything else is, close it (that includes bloated virus/firewall software, which is guaranteed to mire your system performance in sludge). The access the "processes" tab. You should see about 20 or so processes running in the background, and the "system resources" percentage next to each should be near zero. If any of them are consuming over 30 % or so, you've an issue. Use Google to look up the particular process, which should tell you which program has installed the background process.

If you've, for example, an auto-backup routine running that backs up new content to an external hard drive, close it. You definitely don't need this running while watching 'net videos.

4) Finally, if all of the above isn't the issue, ping Rob and ask him if he'll send you a portion of a (short) video in *.wmv format. Once you've put this on your hard drive, try to run it through Windows Media Player. If it's still jerky/not synced with the audio, I would suspect you're running a system with "integrated video ram" - in other words, you're sharing memory that the system uses with the video system. That's a deal killer. Fortunately, it's very easy and very inexpensive to fix this - go to CompUSA (or insert your favorite hardware dealer) and buy an inexpensive video card. Should cost you about $30 for one of the low-end ones, which is more than enough for 'net videos. Installing this card will turn off system resource sharing, and you should be done.

[David Weaver]

I'm not living right either.

Although I must confess that I did re-install Vista on this thing only a month or so ago.



I've been running it for 4 years on a $600 notebook computer, never a problem, certainly no reinstall. Aside from the error checking it constantly does, I kind of like it (perhaps that error checking has kept me out of trouble). XP on a desktop across the house for 10, one reinstall when I had a hardware issue (but that old barge of desktop still works fine).

Never could get myself settled with the mac pricing policy - scavenges too much from the tool budget!

[James Owen]

Come on guys (and gals)!!!!!

Since you're all already in various stages of sliding down that Neanderthalic slope, you might as well finish the trip and come the rest of the way over to the Darkside.....dump them thar Winders machines and get yerself a real computator: get a Mac....no incompatibility issues, designed from the get-go for graphics, and all the other 10,000 reasons to get rid of the "chisel-shaped objects" of the computer world and upgrade to the Lie-Nielsen of computerdom..... :D

[Shaun Mahood]

Does everyone know that iTunes works very well with a Windows computer too? I've never actually owned a Mac, but love my iPod and iTunes.

[David Weaver]

Wife uses it. As with most apple products, I'm afraid my voice pitch will go higher and I'll get an urge to wear terrycloth slippers and carry a purse if I use it.

The music library in media player and explorer file utility work fine for me when I need to stoke the portable music devices.

[Pedro Reyes]

Wow, people pegging their identity to the computer they use! Mac-ophobes!

At my house computers made an appearance in the 70s, Apple plus, Cromenco, Apple IIe, Amiga and PCs, tons of them, switched to Mac in 2010 after 20plus years of PCs, thing just works, wondered why I didn't buy a Mac earlier.

/p

[Shaun Mahood]

I'm afraid my voice pitch will go higher and I'll get an urge to wear terrycloth slippers and carry a purse if I use it.

Ha! That is an awesome description. I originally got one since my older mp3 player didn't work with Audible.com, and then realized how easy it was to buy new music while sitting at work, and now I'm almost reliant on it. Other than that I am fully entrenched in the world of Microsoft - programming, servers, operating systems - for whatever reason, they all just seem to work well for me and allow me to do my work quickly and easily without too much overhead. I have to occasionally provide support for Apple products (usually not that hard, but still different in enough ways to drive me a bit crazy), and every time I try to move towards any sort of Linux-type environment I realize why Microsoft has such a huge amount of the computer market.

Well, that was a bit of an off topic post - it's so rare that there is anything on here that I am actually somewhat qualified to talk about that I better jump on them when I can!

[David Turner]

It must be my antiquated and full of errors P.C. as I used my wife's laptop (1 year old) and the podcasts run just fine. I ran one of those "free" programs that is to clean up all the errors but the only part that is free is the analysis. You must then pay to get the errors fixed. Are there any true free programs to clean up the 2012 errors I apparently have? (MYCLEANPC)

David Turner
Plymouth, MI.

[Zach England]

Wife uses it. As with most apple products, I'm afraid my voice pitch will go higher and I'll get an urge to wear terrycloth slippers and carry a purse if I use it.

The music library in media player and explorer file utility work fine for me when I need to stoke the portable music devices.

I like terry cloth slippers and I carry a bag that has been referred to as a "murse". However, I don't own a mac.

[Shaun Mahood]

Are there any true free programs to clean up the 2012 errors I apparently have? (MYCLEANPC)

Yes, one of the best that I have used is called "Malwarebytes Anti-Malware", which you can download for free from http://www.malwarebytes.org/
A lot of those "free" clean up programs are actually malicious software in disguise. From very brief research it looks like MYCLEANPC is more of a scam to take your money for no reason (making up fake problems, etc).

[David Turner]

Shaun thanks, but the free download would only fix 100 errors free. All the other errors required purchase of the software which is pretty typical of the others I have tried.

David Turner
Plymouth, Mi.

[Shaun Mahood]

David, is that the free download of malware bytes you are talking about? I've used it on many different machines and never had that issue.

[David Keller NC]

Shaun thanks, but the free download would only fix 100 errors free. All the other errors required purchase of the software which is pretty typical of the others I have tried.

David Turner
Plymouth, Mi.

Take it from experience here. The best way to "clean up" your PC is back your data up, then use the Windows install discs to re-format your hard drive and re-install the operating system. You will then need to re-install any 3rd party programs that you have. It may be painful, but it is far and away better than -any- "clean up program".

[Larry Browning]

David,
Malwarebytes does have a free version and a paid version. You probably downloaded the paid version as trialware. Most programs that have both free and paid version try to guide you to the paid version. You have to carefully read stuff before downloading it. Plus, Malwarebytes is a malware removal tool and not a general clean up tool. Give CCleaner a try. That might be more helpful to you.
Also, there is a website called Gizmos Freeware Reviews, they have loads of reviews and links to all sorts of freeware. I have found them to be very reliable. Here is a link to their PC cleanup and tuning category http://www.techsupportalert.com/pc/cleanup-tools.html

(http://www.techsupportalert.com/pc/cleanup-tools.html)