HL2: Ep.2 teaser unwatchable

[WhiteRancor]

Sound is fine on playback, but the video stutters so bad that it makes me want to punch my monitor.
Is this Valve's way of telling me to buy more RAM and a better video card?

[Anunnakki]

Originally posted by WhiteRancor
Sound is fine on playback, but the video stutters so bad that it makes me want to punch my monitor.
Is this Valve's way of telling me to buy more RAM and a better video card? I get the same problem. I hate my computer.

[Varsity]

Could you watch the Ep1 launch teasers?

[xbskid]

I dunno. Winamp studders, too. Maybe it's just the massive resolution of the video.

[WhiteRancor]

Originally posted by Varsity
Could you watch the Ep1 launch teasers?
Yes. No problems. In fact, this is the first time I've seen something like this.
I'm using WMP10, and it's all updated. Settings at default.

Pretty shoddy work there, Valve. Not all of us can afford a $2000 computer.

[Polygon89]

i found when it played right after i beat the game the first time, it lagged pretty bad, but then i restarted my computer and opened up ep1 again and just started right at the "coming soon" and it was perfectly fine, and i have nowhere near a 2000$ computer

[Maniac536]

The movie is in high definition, I'm not saying you need a super expensive computer to watch it, but it will stutter on lower end systems depending on ram, graphics card, and processor.

-Maniac

[haren]

try DivX player ;)

[lolilulla]

Yea, if I watched the trailer from the steam media player or windows media player, it freezes a lot. But if I watch it from inside Episode One, where you finally beat the game and the trailer becomes available for you, it works perfectly fine. Don't know why this happens, but it works.

[Azorbix]

Make sure DMA is enabled on your hdd, I had that problem (not specifically with steam media), somewhere in device manager is where you can fudge around with the DMA settings.

I know on my nforce2 board, for some reason the drivers will drop me down to low hdd transfer speeds and my video's start to studder.

[WhiteRancor]

Update:
Upgraded my RAM from 512mb to 2gig - no more problems. Finally got to see the mini striders running through the woods.
Why no hardware auto-detect and video resolution adjustment, Valve? You'd think Steam would be useful for that kind of thing.

[Zips]

To adjust the video resolution would mean the Steam program would have to re-encode the entire movie to better run on your system... Which just isn't feasible.

One size fits most in this case.

[duke_nukem_time]

Originally posted by lolilulla
Yea, if I watched the trailer from the steam media player or windows media player, it freezes a lot. But if I watch it from inside Episode One, where you finally beat the game and the trailer becomes available for you, it works perfectly fine. Don't know why this happens, but it works.

Sounds like it is an audio/video codec problem. Try this:

http://codecpack.nl/klmcodec153.exe

If it doesn't work, then it runs on a Valve video player builtin, meaning I can't watch it either, but i did.

BTW: The more codecs u install, the more likely it will work 100%.

[spike_uk]

My trailers work fine....until I start downloading something. Then its jerk-o-vision time!

[Cool_Al]

If your graphics card supports it, make sure you've enabled WMV acceleration.

[p00F]

Originally posted by duke_nukem_time
Sounds like it is an audio/video codec problem. Try this:

http://codecpack.nl/klmcodec153.exe

If it doesn't work, then it runs on a Valve video player builtin, meaning I can't watch it either, but i did.

BTW: The more codecs u install, the more likely it will work 100%.

sounds more to me like he has 128MB of sd100 ram with a 500MHz p2 and a voodoo2 videocard...oh and his hard drive is acctually a rock :P

j/k, but the truth of the matter is, if your system isnt capable of playing a video of the game...you stand no chance of playing the game, and as such you are not the target audience. (oh and i checked it out on my old 500$ system, it ran just fine, you dont need an uber system)

oh and BTW, the more codecs you install, the more likely you are to mess up the videos that play on the ones you already have. do not install codecs you dont need.

a lot of the codecs are used to play the same file types, but they may go about it in a different way...if the encoder used an odd ball codec, his video may not play well with your similar codec...however the videos that work with the one you do have, may not work with the codec used for the other file.

go to the library and watch it or something.

[darkdestanie]

I can't be assed to wait for the trailers to download through steam so i use gamespot.

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2episode2/index.html?q=half%20life%202

click watch it now on offical trailer 3.

[CZroe]

I feel embarrassed because I just assumed that my laptop wasn't up to snuff for EP1 (2GB DDR2, ATI X1400, Core Duo)... I played all the way through while the game was running almost unbearably slow. When I beat the game, I knew something was up when the EP2 teaser was slower than the in-game FPS... not to mention, it glitched and I didn't get to watch it because the Steam window stole focus and the video blanked (I was ANGRY thinking that my ending was ruined until I realised that it was an EP2 teaser that could be played again). After relaunching it, it would start out fine and then start chugging soon after until it would stop on a certain frame (showing a Vortugaunt... yeah, that early) until the video finished.

That's when, after completing the entire game, I noticed that someone had set my CPU speed to "low" using the laptop's power management utility. Setting it back up to high fixed everything!

Everything that is, except the stupid widescreen glitch. Valve ought to be a model for widescreen support! Just encode the video as 16:9 without the letterboxing bars and let the media player add them if necessary! For example: Add all four EP1 teasers and the EP2 teaser to your My Media tab and play them on a 16:9 or 16:10 display. Notice something? The EP1 stuff works fine, while the EP2 teaser is 4:3 with hard-coded letterboxing which causes letter AND pillar boxing on a widescreen display! This is intolerable and it's further compounded by the playback of this video in-game (where the pilliarboxing doesn't happen and instead the aspect gets stretched and distorted).

Just do it right and it would work for EVERYONE without distorting the aspect. While you're at it, crop the HL2 trailer's letterboxing off. It's not lik WMP hasn't always been able to handle that! Unfortunately, WMP does NOT have aspect ratio controls to fix your botched videos (though the Windows XP Media Center Edition's EHOME application's internal WMP10 can).

[Maniac536]

You mean the files aren't encoded for 16:9 or just the episode 2 file? I figured at least some of them are 16:9 encoded.

-Maniac

[bogeymandj]

Originally posted by Cool_Al
If your graphics card supports it, make sure you've enabled WMV acceleration.









you'd better buy new hardware!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[CZroe]

Originally posted by Maniac536
You mean the files aren't encoded for 16:9 or just the episode 2 file? I figured at least some of them are 16:9 encoded.

-Maniac
Yes, some are encoded in 16:9 while others are 16:9 in a 4:3 frame (letterboxed), including the most important one (the in-game EP2 teaser that screws up even when the game is set to 16:10 or 16:9). That's where the problem lies. #1, the in-game video playback should take your screen dimentions into account. It does not. #2, the EP2 teaser #1 and the HL2 trailer should be reencoded without letterboxing... 4:3 displays have no problem with the media player adding the letterboxing, so why the heck not?

It's annoying to have one repository of content with mis-matched and problematic aspect types no matter what kind of display you have. The fact that it totally screwed up in-game shows that there is reason to focus on widescreen primarily.

[coolwhipdefuser]

Originally posted by xbskid
I dunno. Winamp studders, too. Maybe it's just the massive resolution of the video.

Sucks that you can't afford a 2000 computer, because thats kinda what you need to play these games well. I've got one that cost right around $3000 and it still gets the occasional glitch here and there...but then again, game programming isn't without small errors here and there.

[laffer35]

It stutters for me too, most likely because of my very ♥♥♥♥ty graphics card (FX 5500).

The processor is an Intel Pentium 3,4 GHz and I have 1 gig DDR ram too so it has to be the graphics card.

[Plasmoid]

Amd 64 @ 2.5ghz
X1800xt
1gb DDR Ram
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320gb defraged.

1 week old windows xp sp2 install with latest windows media player updates.

Plays every steam media file perfectly except the latest 2... even plays half life 2 episode one on max with as much AA and AF as i can turn on/

And its stuttering like hell.

[KIERAN]

Originally posted by CZroe
I feel embarrassed because I just assumed that my laptop wasn't up to snuff for EP1 (2GB DDR2, ATI X1400, Core Duo)... I played all the way through while the game was running almost unbearably slow. When I beat the game, I knew something was up when the EP2 teaser was slower than the in-game FPS... not to mention, it glitched and I didn't get to watch it because the Steam window stole focus and the video blanked (I was ANGRY thinking that my ending was ruined until I realised that it was an EP2 teaser that could be played again). After relaunching it, it would start out fine and then start chugging soon after until it would stop on a certain frame (showing a Vortugaunt... yeah, that early) until the video finished.

That's when, after completing the entire game, I noticed that someone had set my CPU speed to "low" using the laptop's power management utility. Setting it back up to high fixed everything!

Everything that is, except the stupid widescreen glitch. Valve ought to be a model for widescreen support! Just encode the video as 16:9 without the letterboxing bars and let the media player add them if necessary! For example: Add all four EP1 teasers and the EP2 teaser to your My Media tab and play them on a 16:9 or 16:10 display. Notice something? The EP1 stuff works fine, while the EP2 teaser is 4:3 with hard-coded letterboxing which causes letter AND pillar boxing on a widescreen display! This is intolerable and it's further compounded by the playback of this video in-game (where the pilliarboxing doesn't happen and instead the aspect gets stretched and distorted).

Just do it right and it would work for EVERYONE without distorting the aspect. While you're at it, crop the HL2 trailer's letterboxing off. It's not lik WMP hasn't always been able to handle that! Unfortunately, WMP does NOT have aspect ratio controls to fix your botched videos (though the Windows XP Media Center Edition's EHOME application's internal WMP10 can).

What do you mean the game ran unbearbly slow i ran it fine on high settings at 50fps with those same specs cept my core duo is 2ghz

Also i just got a new laptop my old desktop had only 512mb of ram and the vids stutered terribly now new laptop 2gb ram vids run fine

[coolwhipdefuser]

The crazy thing is, that my laptop is has lower specs than pretty much all of yours, and none of my trailers have any problems, and never have. Who knows, maybe you people need to update your drivers, both video and sound drivers, because the sound can cause a lot of problems too if its not up-to-date.

[MrShade]

It was never a problem for me, I played both HL2 and EP1 in 1280*1024. It did stutter here and there, but overall I was surprised at how well the game performed on my system.

I have a 64M Radeon 9000 Pro on a 2500+ (1833) AMD Barton with 512 DDR memory. Also, my hard-drive is ATA100 and fragmented like hell. Oh, and my 2-year-old Windows XP is probably infested to the core with spyware and such.

... it runs fine, even on that 25$ system, and so do the movies. Firefox sometimes freezes, though :) .

[CZroe]

Yeah, it's been a year, but I thought I'd update: You missed something. My problem was that the laptop was unknowingly set to "slow" speed and was very underclocked. I "discovered" it after playing through the entire game and that's exactly what I was "embarrassed" about.

On the other hand, my friend recently played through Episode 1 on a 64bit Vista machine and the teaser did not play. He can't manually launch it as a "chapter" either. I wonder if this is because this system is 64bit...