What happens if you set up a Smartdrive cache for the CD-ROM drive?

What PIO mode is the IDE controller set to in the BIOS? What does Windows say it is running at in the device manager?

Is the IDE controller sharing an IRQ with the video card or sound card?

It sound to me more like a data transfer issue than an AVI specific issue from they way you are describing it.

Chaniyth wrote:

I also have Video for Windows 1.1E installed.

Please also check if it's the right version and uptodate (Intel Indeo codecs 3.2 and 4.1 were optional)-
Some VFWs were faster than others (supported DCI ?) if my memory serves me well.

Speaking of the S3 Trio, you also can try the ELSA drivers. They used to be fine, afaik.
See http://win31.de/esoft.htm

Edit: Oh, and please never load CD-ROM device drivers like VIDE-CDD "high", if it isn't necessary.
It just causes trouble often. Better use an alternate driver that's small and leave it in conventional memory.

Edit: Found it! It was Elsa's VfW 1.1e with Offscreen support. -> http://stephan.win31.de/vfw_elsa.zip

@cyclone3d SmartDrv is enabled for CD however, with or without though doesn't change anything regarding this matter. IDE modes are in "AUTO", there are no IRQ conflicts.

@Jo22 VFW 1.1E is what I use it's the final release for Windows 3.x. Intel Indeo codecs installed are 2.1/RAW and 3.2 Trying different drivers didn't change anything.

The goodtimes.avi and other AVI's on the Windows 95 CD are in the Cinepak format and the Age of Sail opening cinematic AVI is in the Microsoft Video 1 (CRAM) format. I know for sure the Cinepak codec is installed (version 1.6.0.73), not sure about CRAM but I do have a "Microsoft Video 1 Compressor" listed in the Drivers section of the Windows 3.11 Control Panel, i'm not sure if that is CRAM or not.

just check if the files copy to the disk or somewhere else with expected speed; You might lso check if the movies copy slower when they play slower - just to check if the cd is well readable in that spot

Ok. so some progress has been made. For the goodtimes.avi and other AVI's on the Windows 95 CD it's a CPU speed issue... the CPU needs to run slower [I temporarily disabled the DX4-100's cache] and the videos played fine, so i'm assuming it's either the Cinepak codec at fault or the Windows 3.11 media player at fault. The opening cinematic for Age of Sail however is still sloooowwwww!

Hm. Not sure what it is then. If speed is an issue, did you try to enable/disable FastDisk driver (32-Bit disk access) ?
It's not necessary, normally, but affects overall Windows performance in so far, as it can work in tandem with Windows 3.11's HDD cache (32-Bit file access)
and allows Windows to entirely stay in 32-Bit Protected Mode (if both are enabled), which in turn affects the CPU caches.
I know it's a far strech, but that's all that comes to mind right now (except that it's a video driver issue; i.e., lack of scaling/colour transformation).
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32-bit_disk_access

(Btw, Microhouse Windows 32Bit Hard Disk driver for drives larger than 540M -> http://win31.de/edrivers.htm)