SH3 and SH4 intro videos

[daveandkacey]

I downloaded SH collection from Steam which is installed to an external USB 2.0 drive...

The game plays fine (little confused about the compass...my boat seems to be going opposite on the nav map from the selected compass direction), but the intro movie has very bad stuttering sound along with difficulty shifting between scenes (ie. large digital artifacts a couple of times)...this also occurs on the SH4 intro...

I've seen this issue mentioned a few times in the forums...I've downloaded the K-Lite codec as someone suggested, but that didn't help...

I tried downloading the MS Media 9 codec pack but during installation, MS told me that I have the wrong Windows Media Player for that codec pack (I have 11, I think the pack supports 7 through 10)...

Out of curiosity, those of you who have had the stuttering issue, were you running the game from an external drive?

Does anybody know what codec those videos use? They're .wmv files...

It could be my hardware/drivers, but I'm doubtful...the game runs fine in full resolution with all the eye candy...

Anyone that had the stuttering sound issue, how did you fix it?

Thanks,
Dave

PS. I have a Dell XPS m1710 laptop running XP Media Center Edition w/ SP2...I have a 7950 GTX with the latest Dell approved driver 174.31...I have a Sigmatel Audio chip with a driver that I'm unwilling to change because I went through dozens until I found one that worked with the majority of my games...the most recent version of DX9 is installed (checked last night)...I'm successfully running Half-Life 2 and its subsequent episodes and Sacred from Steam on the external drive...and I'm also running everything from Independence War to Pacific Fighters to Quake 4 successfully from the external drive...just these two intro movies are driving me nuts...

[daveandkacey]

I downloaded SH collection from Steam which is installed to an external USB 2.0 drive...

The game plays fine (little confused about the compass...my boat seems to be going opposite on the nav map from the selected compass direction), but the intro movie has very bad stuttering sound along with difficulty shifting between scenes (ie. large digital artifacts a couple of times)...this also occurs on the SH4 intro...

I've seen this issue mentioned a few times in the forums...I've downloaded the K-Lite codec as someone suggested, but that didn't help...

I tried downloading the MS Media 9 codec pack but during installation, MS told me that I have the wrong Windows Media Player for that codec pack (I have 11, I think the pack supports 7 through 10)...

Out of curiosity, those of you who have had the stuttering issue, were you running the game from an external drive?

Does anybody know what codec those videos use? They're .wmv files...

It could be my hardware/drivers, but I'm doubtful...the game runs fine in full resolution with all the eye candy...

Anyone that had the stuttering sound issue, how did you fix it?

Thanks,
Dave

PS. I have a Dell XPS m1710 laptop running XP Media Center Edition w/ SP2...I have a 7950 GTX with the latest Dell approved driver 174.31...I have a Sigmatel Audio chip with a driver that I'm unwilling to change because I went through dozens until I found one that worked with the majority of my games...the most recent version of DX9 is installed (checked last night)...I'm successfully running Half-Life 2 and its subsequent episodes and Sacred from Steam on the external drive...and I'm also running everything from Independence War to Pacific Fighters to Quake 4 successfully from the external drive...just these two intro movies are driving me nuts...

[VikingGrandad]

I strongly suspect that running a data-intensive game like SH3/4 is going to be adversely affected by running it from an external drive.

Not only could the slower connection speed make the movie playback jerky, I'm sure it will also increase your game and saved game loading times too.

Laptop drives are usually slower (5200rpm) than desktop drives (7200rpm), but your laptop's has a fast SATA type interface, as opposed to the old IDE PATA types that all PCs used to have. I'm sure your internal drive would be quicker at reading and writing data than an external USB 2.0 drive.

You mention that the games run OK otherwise, so if you don't have room to install them on your laptop's hard drive, I suggest you delete/move/rename the movie files for SH3 and SH4, so you don't have to click past them each time.

SH3 Commander includes a built-in option to disable SH3's movie files.

[tuddley3]

http://bestsmileys.com/welcome/4.gif

Dave, a few things you can do to help in this department.

1) Go to SilentHunterIII\Data\Movies\Intro, and rename or delete the 2 movies in that folder(Intro and Logo).

2) From the main menu, go to Options and disable the Event Camera. I've found disabling this helps the performance of the entire game, even start-up. If you choose to do this, you may be able to keep the Intro Movies, as they will play without skipping.

[daveandkacey]

Thanks for the help...

I'm not convinced that it's due to the external drive although it could be...that's why I put it out there...I run Silverfall and Quake 4 and Crysis from the external drive which all use game engine to show cutscenes and they all work fine...(well, not all...Silverfall has a couple of quirks...)...but if I can't fix the stuttering, I'll definitely do what you suggested Viking...thank you...

And I'll try your #2 suggestion tuddley as soon as I hop off the internet and let you know how it works tomorrow...thanks for the idea...

[daveandkacey]

Turning off the event camera didn't help.

Also, going to windowed mode did not help.

I opened up the .wmv files with Media player, and they played fine so another point for not being an external drive issue (although maybe the game's movie viewer requires higher data transfer rates).

It's strange, but I give up.

Thanks again for replying.

[tuddley3]

Well as long as the game plays fine, you can just rename the Intro and Logo files, and at start-up, it will bypass the movies and go straight to the loading screen. After all, the intro movie gets boring after a while.