Choppy playback for iTunes movies

This solution did the work for me....thanks very much sir!

After experiencing this and reading a few posts here I discovered a solution for myself.

Windows 7 Professional 64 bit.

Go to sound icon lower right side, right click

choose sound playback

click on active device

click on properties

click on advanced

You will see a dropdown bar which lists various 16 and 24 bit sampling rates

Its the bits and Hz values you need to focus on.

Go to iTunes click on the upper left hand icon for drop down menu

choose preferences

choose playback

You'll notice iTunes also has both bit rates 16 and 24 as well as Hz values.

44.1 was the lowest Hz setting on iTunes

I set both my windows settings to 24 bit and 44 Hz as well as iTunes and this cleared up the problem.

There are several things going on here (if you want further understanding). Matching the values is apparently essential for iTunes media because they have very strict encoding standards. If your OS setting is at a higher bit rate/frequency than the media then it does something called oversampling. When your PC doesn't adjust correctly for oversampling the result is its pushing the digital audio signal through "too fast" Thus the words and action in the scenes are out of synch. If the pc setting is lower than the media setting then you get undersampling and the lack of effective compensation for this causes problems as well. In either situation if your pc and media aren't on the same page then your pc is doing EXTRA work to try to adapt to the media with an inaccurate sampling setting.

Thanks, this worked, it doesnt need to be realtek just change the format to studio qualty 24 bit 48000 hz and its fixed..

thanks it helped my choppy play back issues!

Thanks! This advice fixed it for me. I don't think any other post said to MATCH the rates.

oh dear. gone back to normal choppy playback <gives up>

last post.. matching the rates definately fixed the video I was watching. For some weird reason, videos in my library which I'd already viewed still stuttered (video stopped and the caught back up with the audio). I went back to the library, right clicked the video which was still a problem, and selected "RESET PLAYS", it then played absolutely perfectly. Begs the question why, but anyway, there it is.

Interesting. I still get updates to this thread and a recent critical post landed in my inbox but yet does not appear to be here? It wasn't offensive (aside from mentioning Windows 8 and that OS itself is almost enough to turn me to the Apple dark side) so I wonder what happened to it?

Sorry to see people still having issues. Mine were resolved until I bought a new PC. Now I have to start all over again. It really shouldn't be this hard just to get a video to play correctly. My choppyness is gone but now I have s lag on the sound instead. It's like being at an old skool cinema whrn they start the audio track a fraction too early.

Hopefully this won't get removed, but I am posting from my Samsung phone so I expect that won't go down overbig.

Thanks!

Bit settings didn't match. Such an easy fix...that I probably never would have stumbled on considering it's been driving me nuts for months and I think I looked at both those properties. It's only easy in hindsight.

Thanks again

Hi all,

One fix that was mentioned earlier was changing the playback quality to 720p when that was all that was asked for. I downloaded a digital copy of Star Trek Into Darkness after getting the Blu-Ray. Yeah, it was just handy to have the digital copy on my laptop for those Star Trek emergency moments. I'd been playing it at 1080p in iTunes on my laptop, and I was getting that jerking motion (though not as bad as some of you). There would be a minute jerkiness, where a frame would skip with audio fine. In the opening titles, you could see the letters jumping backwards just momentarily. I rightclicked on the entry for ST and saw that the preferred playback should have been in 720p. So, under the Edit/Preferences Menu in Itunes, I selected the playback option and changed the Preffered Video Version to 720p and voila... No jerkiness.... and still decent HD. So maybe this is simply a version issue. I don't download movies or tv from iTunes at all, and simply try and buy Blu-Rays with digital codes, but I'n surprised the standard isn't 1080p

Hope this helps at least some of you....always check the preffered playback version...

I'm still getting choppy playback on all of my purchased and digital copy films after trying the settings recommended here. Is there any software that could help with the problem? Could using windows 8 operating system create any problems?

thanks for this information. I just put a system together and it is not lacking in resources. Everything was working perfectly until I tried to watch one of my many itunes purchased movies. (.m4v).

I tried everything then I saw your note on matching the audio settings in itunes preferences and playback devices. It worked perfectly. It is amazing how something like this can cause so many headaches.

I'm using Win 8.1

thanks again.....

So I to have been having this problem for ages and see no sign of Apple fixing. But I think I may have found the issue and am keen for others to test. First to clarify - 720 plays fine, but 1080 has random stuttering. Its not the wifi syncing or any of the other causes listed (I have tried them all). I have a high end PC. i7 920 and GTX780 but noticed that the clock speed was stepping down (Intel EIST) when it was playing. So I went into the BIOS and turned of EIST, C1E etc and made sure the CPU stayed at clock speed and was prevented from going into energy saving mode.

And suddenly the stuttering was gone. I watched a movie last night purchased on itunes and it played almost perfectly. (I think I saw a couple of frames drop here and there) but no horrible stuttering.

I am keen to see if others can try this to see if it is the actual cause. In the mean time I'll keep wathcing a few more 1080's to see if it is really fixed.

UPDATED: Problem not solved. 1080 still choppy with CPU clock speed locked.

Really wish Apple would look at this. Makes Movies unwatchable