Choppy video after Lion install

Same here on my early 2008 iMac. The graphics were working fine with Leopard and Snow Leopard, but once I upgraded to Lion, the graphics get super sluggish and slow (i.e. watching a video full screen gets super choppy, or going full screen with an app). I have to restart the iMac every day, which temporarily relieves the problem, but it does get annoying. Hopefully Apple will release a graphics update soon.

Ah... finally... I have the exact same problem with a similar machine-- early 2008 iMac.

Choppiness is a Finder problem. Expose, Dashboard, etc. all are choppy and delayed. No major CPU activity according to Activity Monitor.

I went on the Apple tech support page and asked the question about the choppy graphics. The seemingly inane suggestion boxes lead me to, surprisingly, the correct but disappointing answer. iMacs made in early 2008 do not have a graphics card that supports Lion.

That's the easy answer.

If you go to their support page and type in "choppy graphics with Lion" you'll have the option of viewing their electronic troubleshooting dialog, or you can pay a one-time fee for LIVE tech support. I chose the former and got a straight answer at no additional charge.

I just bought a trackpad for the iMac and was thinking about turning it around and sending it back. But the trackpad also (on paper) is compatible with later versions of Snow Leopard. So I just might keep it, revert back to Snow Leopard, use the trackpad on that machine, and enjoy Lion on my MBP, where it works great.

I don't know what you mean when you say early 2008 iMacs don't have a graphics card that "supports Lion." I haven't seen any hard system requirements besides the ones here: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP629. While the 2008 iMac's Radeon HD 2400 XT doesn't support OpenCL, I don't see anywhere that says you need a card that supports OpenCL to run Lion well. In any case, I've seen forums where people with 2007 iMacs and MacBook Pros have Lion running just fine with no sluggishness at all.

Also, why would this problem also plague newer machines? I've seen forums where 2011 MacBook Pros and Airs have this choppy video/animation problem. If you really feel the information you found is a definitive answer, please provide a link. But again, I'm having a hard time understanding why newer machines (including my 2009 MBP) have this issue too.

Ever since I upgraded to Lion videos online are choppy and slow. And I'm using the latest Macbook Pro 2011 i7. Everything else seems fast but not videos in web browsers. Was hoping the last Lion update was going to fix the issue.

I'm using a trackpad to operate my iMac right now. It works. It's just that the graphics are choppy and somewhat delayed to boot. I don't get the same visual effect and perception of ease of use that I get using my MBP on the same OS.

As with others, when I start up, the graphics work great. Smooth and seamless. It takes a few hours' worth of operating the Finder, however, to show a degradation of the ability of the machine to keep pace with all of the calls to the graphics card to perform complex maneuvers.

If there is anyone out there who has an early 2008 iMac running Lion with fluid, seamless graphics, please let me know. I'd like to know what's on your machine, or isn't on your machine, that allows for this to take place.

I am using a MacMini, 1 year old. Just installed Lion and the video playback is dreadfully choppy. Snow Leopard was perfect. I tried playback using VLC and other players, but without improvement. This is a work machine, so I couldn't waste any more time on it, and completely erased the hard drive and re-installed Snow Leopard. Now the video is back to normal. So I'd say they have some serious work to do yet on Lion. Also, there is a Lion Quicktime limitation to 64bit mode, meaning any quicktime movie you try to play that needs 32-bit mode wiill result in a nasty message which will direct you to enable Quicktime's 32 bit mode, which runs even slower, making the video even more choppy. Good gads. It's almost as bad as Microsoft! Don't they test this before releaseing it?

Excatly the same issue. imac 27 spring 2011 running Lion. Video are choppy in Quicktime (and therefore itunes) and are perfectly smooth in VLC... Any update for this issue? Thanks

Well, I was experiencing the same on my MBP 2011 i7. Searched for an answer and didn't find much. So, I booted in 32-bit mode, and videos played fine. Rebooted in 64-bit mode and it's playing videos fine and in HD, no choppyness. Not sure why or what happened.

This is definitely a Lion issue - see this link.

Thanks for the link. It's better that it's a software issue that can be fixed in the next version. Here's to hoping...

I'm definitely experiencing choppy video after installing Lion. For me, it's only Adobe Flash video (even when running with the lastest and greatest version of Flash Player) and only when playing it fullscreen. I do notice that, after a restart, the video plays smoothly for awhile (days, maybe?), but eventually becomes choppy again. A restart fixes it up for another few days or so.

This problem absolutely did not occur under any version of [Snow] Leopard.

I'm running on an early 2008 iMac.

I'm having the same issues with 2008 iMac. Choppy video on both quicktime and flash files. Ever since upgrading to Lion.

Experienced choppy video after upgrading to Lion on a 2009 17" MBP (NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB)

earlier this fall.

Threw everything out tonight, formatted the disk and made a clean install.

I have only installled the latest Flash Player since the clean install

Logged on to nhl.com and....

Voila, c'est ca: Choppy video. Niether more nor less, just as choppy as before.

Are we supposed to have to live with this?