Stuttering Audio on Movies

JaySee84

Since release I've been having problems with the audio on the movies stuttering. With the latest update, it's gotten even worse.
All other in-game audio is fine, it's just whenever a movies plays, it's crackling and stuttering.
I know of several others who are experiencing the same issues, but nothing seems to be being done about it.

JaySee84

Current Behaviour: Stuttering/crackling audio when movies play in game.

Expected Behaviour: Audio to play properly.


It seems to be worse on the Intro movie, but I have noticed it on subsequent cutscenes. When I go to the Movies folder in the directory, and play the files with VLC or WMP, they play perfectly. It's only the in-game playback that is affected.

LordsDarkKnight185

I will second this. While I don't think it has gotten worse for me since the new patch, it has always studdered since launch (NWN videos do the same thing though, and I could never find an answer for it either)

Metalloman

I've never had scratchy movie audio till now, after patch 1.0.2009, trying to find a solution..

EDIT: there is 2009a, hope will solve this!

ElfMageCalledIt

I am having the same issue as well, only difference is that before today's patch the audio in the movies was fine.

agentchaos

i agree. no problems with movie audio until after i downloaded the game update #2

Metalloman

ElfMageCalledIt said:

I am having the same issue as well, only difference is that before today's patch the audio in the movies was fine.

agentchaos said:

i agree. no problems with movie audio until after i downloaded the game update #2

As I've said! Really strange, I say..let's see with 2009a that is available now..maybe it will fix it!

EDIT: Just downloaded it but didn't solved this issue on Beamdog version nor on Stand-Alone version..

JaySee84

It's annoying because it's the ONLY problem I'm having. Everything else is running smoothly and so far bug free. It's just really jarring when I enter a town and my ears are assaulted with crackly audio.

moody_mage

I went into the control panel for my nvidia card and forced the playback to scale for quality rather than letting the card decided what to choose. This fixed it for me.

Metalloman

Tried the same on my ATI RADEON HD 6970..nothing.

Mortianna

@JaySee84 I'm experiencing the exact same issue you described. The stuttering actually got worse with the new patch, but the sound in the game is fine.

JaySee84

Mortianna said:

@JaySee84 I'm experiencing the exact same issue you described. The stuttering actually got worse with the new patch, but the sound in the game is fine.

Annoying isn't it?! I'm just hoping if I keep posting on this thread someone will see it and do something about it.

flare100

I also have been experiencing this problem after installing the recent patch. Very annoying.

Nathan

Hey folks, is this *just* with movies for you? I feel like people may be reporting more than one thing here.

Mortianna

@Nathan Yep. Just the movies.

Sam_

@Nathan I only get it with movies. The Black Pitts stutters the worst for me.

norolim

I've been getting this even before the patch. Interesting to notice, that when I play the movies in VLC, the sound is fine.

Wow. And after the update it's absolutely unbearable! What have you done Overhaul? Are you actually trying to make tha game even more buggy, than at release? The video is also stuttering now, not just the audio.

I'm using quite an old SB Audigy soundcard.

LordsDarkKnight185

@Nathan That is correct, just video. In-game audio is just fine. Just like @Norolim said, I can watch them in VLC perfectly but in-game they are crackly/studdery

And I know this is not your department, but the same thing happens when watching videos in Neverwinter Nights (I bought the complete edition from GOG), but i thought it was an issue with the game itself. So if finding a solution fixes both issues, that would be amazing.

JaySee84

@Nathan Yes, just videos. And like others have said, I can watch them just fine with VLC outside of the game. Gameplay and sound in-game is not affected at all.

Malavon_Despana

Nathan said:

Hey folks, is this *just* with movies for you? I feel like people may be reporting more than one thing here.

For me ( after update 2 ) movies are ok, but in game ( when loading save or change area ) the sounds lag a bit. Sometimes a bit of noise when speak to png ( tested with winthorp ), and a bit of noise too when I play start from launcher. After character creation, during the prologue ( Nested atop the cliff etc ) I can hear background sounds of Candlekeep, and instead should not.
Strange things, update 1 run the sounds perfectly

Nukenin

I was able to "fix" this by reencoding the movies to 480p (I tried 576p but still had the stuttering playback—stutter also remained if I tried to just alter the bitrate of the movies but keep them at 720p).

I suspect the player used within BG:EE is having problems—on some systems at least—with the video size (as in the pixel size of the video, not file size), and this is causing the stutter on playback.

My system is running at 1600x900 with an AMD A6-3400M APU. It is able to playback the original videos just fine from the command line using FFmpeg's FFplay executable. Other portions of the game work fine as well.

I was just getting tired of the crackle whenever the BG intro came up (and resting, etc) so my interim solution works fine for me (the videos being smaller in size I can live with) but I of course would welcome any official solution that solves this issue for all experiencing it.

JaySee84

Nukenin said:

I was able to "fix" this by reencoding the movies to 480p (I tried 576p but still had the stuttering playback—stutter also remained if I tried to just alter the bitrate of the movies but keep them at 720p).

I suspect the player used within BG:EE is having problems—on some systems at least—with the video size (as in the pixel size of the video, not file size), and this is causing the stutter on playback.

My system is running at 1600x900 with an AMD A6-3400M APU. It is able to playback the original videos just fine from the command line using FFmpeg's FFplay executable. Other portions of the game work fine as well.

I was just getting tired of the crackle whenever the BG intro came up (and resting, etc) so my interim solution works fine for me (the videos being smaller in size I can live with) but I of course would welcome any official solution that solves this issue for all experiencing it.

Well at least that's something. Of all the threads I've seen about this issue, no-one has come up with a cause, let alone a reasonable solution. Hopefully the devs will read this and have an idea of what's going wrong. Then work on implementing a fix...

Nukenin

Hopefully the fact that something seems to have changed in the 1.0.2009 update to exacerbate this problem for some will also help isolate the problem and lead to a solution. I've had the problem since release, but it sure seemed worse with the 1.0.2009 update.

Hmm, okay, there's a new update. I wonder what this will do to all my reencoded movies. (Fortunately I rigged up a kludgey batch file to do all the work for me.)

Nukenin

The update adds the (I believe original) credits movie, accessible when you press the "CREDITS" button when you access "Movies" from "Options".

It's a WebM movie, but 640x480. It plays fine for me within the game, no stuttering, but the other movies (which of course the update procedure cheerily redownloaded and replaced) still stutter.

For those having problems with stuttering, see how the new (albeit the old!) credits movie plays back for you from within the game.

Metalloman

I'll repost this topic in the build 2009 discussion.

EDIT: btw, there was another 2009 build to download, let's call it 2009b, but in the fix log this issue is not contempled.

Hope they will fix it in the next build, like 2009c or 2010

JaySee84

Nukenin said:

The update adds the (I believe original) credits movie, accessible when you press the "CREDITS" button when you access "Movies" from "Options".

It's a WebM movie, but 640x480. It plays fine for me within the game, no stuttering, but the other movies (which of course the update procedure cheerily redownloaded and replaced) still stutter.

For those having problems with stuttering, see how the new (albeit the old!) credits movie plays back for you from within the game.

I will try this out when I get home from work then post my findings.

Nathan

Okay, so if this is just movies then thanks for the feedback, folks - we're looking into it.

Ronin13

For what it's worth, to get a better sense of the scope of this, I too had mild stuttering during in-game movies initially, but it was made noticeably worse by the '2009' patch and not helped by the latest one.

JaySee84

Just tried the new update and watched the credits movie. That plays perfectly. But, as expected, all other movies still have the crackling audio.

Metalloman

Same for me, Let's wait for the next patch, maybe 1.0.2010 will solve something!

Stickfigure2

Actually I'm running into an issue where I cannot hear the characters voice when I'm sampling them out in Character creation. You rapidly click it and you might hear the voive once out of 12 clicks.