Video Stutters and Dropped frames

[Ceer123]

Sorry to start another topic on this subject but after two days of reading posts and trying everything I still can not get smooth playback. I have tried different decoders tons of different settings all gave pretty much the same results. This all started when I wanted a new extender (which are not available), previously I only used extenders to play video. I am running Sage 7 on windows XP. I have a quad core CPU and a very decent Nvidia video card, so resources should not be a problem.
If I play a clip from an external player I do not have the issue. Playing from Sage usually results in half of the frames being dropped. The main difference is the external player uses haali media splitter while sage uses its own demux. I have tried to disable sage's demux via the registry but it still uses it. I also read that it is necessary for playing back a live recording so I am not sure if I want to disable it anyway.
I am using VMR9 with the Nvidia decoder but the sage decoder has the same issue. Also the issue seems to be with all file types, mpeg2, h.264, etc..

[mitchedo]

I can't believe nobody has answered you yet. I had serious issues with stuttering as well with HD content on my Win 7 system. There is a thread here somewhere about a rather complicated process to get SageTV running smoothly. I'll see if I can dig it up and edit the post.

[hedly]

Does it happen if you use a different player, like Windows media player?

Did you roll back from Win7 to WinXP? In my experience upgrading from WinXP to 7 fixed many of my problems? In fact, I merely used the Win7 codecs without really any issues. If you have seen my posts recently it appears that the problem was the AMD drivers.

Lastly, while you say you have a descent video card, the key seems to be the amount of ram. With HD content I have found that having a newer card with a good amount of ram is really the key to a good experience.

The processor will really not do that much for video.

[Ceer123]

Thanks for the replies. I am able to play the video in VLC stutter free. I did try windows 7 with sage but I could not get it to run with my HD-PVR and firewire switching. After a week of working on it I went back to XP. The video card has 1GB of memory so I hope that is enough.
The common issue is the sage demux. When that is used I get the dropped frames. Obviously VLC does not use that. Luckily VLC allows me to play clips that are recording so I have a work around, although it is annoying. Any suggestions?