Home movies wont play

[mosanna]

Hi,

 

Okay, so I have a sony digital camera...a nice new one. I use it often to film with. I have previously uploaded and edited my movie clips on my HP Pavilion 1 year old laptop and they have worked fine.

 

Recently though when I upload my clips they will not play properly. In media player they will not play at all although I can hear the audio. In VLC they play but jam every few seconds. In Quicktime they play all through but the clips are slightly slower than they should be and the quality (my camera is HD) is very bad.

 

I have tried converting the clips but that doesn't seem to help much. Sometimes it has made them play through but the quality is appalling.

 

I have put my memory card into a friends laptop and they play perfectly on media player and so on........I guess this means it's my laptop that is the problem. On the other hand, I tried another friends laptop and his has the same problem as mine.

 

What I dont understand is that they used to work fine. It is only recently that they have stopped working.

 

I was advised to download a codec so I got a windows media player one but it didn't work. It played the files but in slow motion.

 

So i'm guessing there must be something wrong with some settings on my laptop...?

 

My movie files say they are AVI. if that means anything.

 

I've asked for help before on the Adobe website forum but ended up just getting insulted for no reason and they came up with no reasonable answers what so ever.

 

Im so frustrated with it.

 

It seems like my only option at the moment is to re format my hard drive....which obviously is kind of extreme.

 

Any help would be so great.

 

Thanks

 

P.S. I am running Vista home premium

Edited May 7, 2011 by mosanna

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help.

I doubt a reformat of the hard drive is needed unless it is nearly full, in which case some space will need to be created.

It does sound like a problem with the computer though, considering you say they are of HD format then those video's require quite a lot of memory or RAM to play well. Baring that in mind, it may be a failed RAM module at fault.

Can you tell us the make and model and any of the specifications of your computer so we can go further with you.

Nev.

[Guest EliotG]

Sounds to me as though the machine is for some reason struggling to play the files. Does the laptop get hot at all or do you hear a fan spinning very fast when trying to play them? Have you tried closing everything else down whilst watching the videos? You may be asking too much of your laptop. What is the model number?

[mosanna]

Well my hard drive is almost completely full I only have 2.28 GB free! I don't really have any programs on my laptop though it's all music and Yeah like you said HD videos and high pixel photos that take up a lot of space.

 

So I guess that might be a reason, they worked before..maybe when I had more room?

 

My laptop does get very hot...and the fan goes crazy...but only when it's been on all day really. I don't think that's the reason they aren't playing it seems more like a fault with the files. They don't work even when my laptop is cool.

 

I have a Pavilion DV6 1210sa

The serial number is: CNF9290F2W

 

Just in case it matters I have a Sony HX1 digital camera.....

 

I have a friends hard drive i could put stuff on.

 

Thanks for your help.