Are you using Windows Media Player, or something else? Does VLC, for instance, work at the same speed in both cases?

Do you have the same drivers installed in both cases?

Jorpho wrote:

Are you using Windows Media Player, or something else? Does VLC, for instance, work at the same speed in both cases?

Do you have the same drivers installed in both cases?

I am using the stock media player. The unfancy one that looks kind of like the win3.1 one
I am not sure that I have enough space to install VLC -- I will try.

The drivers are the stock S3 Virge drivers that come with Win95 OSR2 and Win98 FE
respectively. Windows 98 has DX7 installed

Aren't there more up-to-date drivers available for Windows 98 than the ones included on the installation CD?

Jorpho wrote:

Aren't there more up-to-date drivers available for Windows 98 than the ones included on the installation CD?

I don't know. But I find it odd the OLDER windows 95 drivers work better

There are many variables here. It could very well have something to do with DirectX 7, or possibly the different versions of Media Player. (Does your USB card even work in Windows 95?)

In any case, looking for newer drivers would probably be a good idea.

Jorpho wrote:

There are many variables here. It could very well have something to do with DirectX 7, or possibly the different versions of Media Player. (Does your USB card even work in Windows 95?)

In any case, looking for newer drivers would probably be a good idea.

Ok upgrading the driver helped a small amount but there are still long (500mS+) frames
I created a disk image before upgrading directx, and rolling back helped even more but still long frames.

The USB card doesn't work in 95 but does in 98. In fact in 95 its annoying because it nags for a driver every boot

Oh well... Does disabling the USB card in Device Manager in Windows 98 make any difference? It would be a useful possibility to rule out.

Maybe it's some codec weirdness; I think Windows 98 might be using DirectShow. Unfortunately, it's been ages since I messed with those ancient versions of Media Player and I wouldn't know which options should be poked at; some of them are probably buried in the registry. That's why it's important to try VLC.

I will pull the USB card when I get a chance.
I cannot get VLC to work right.
Version 0.7.2 installed, but when I try to play a video, the time bar
moves but it displays a black window with no sound.

Version 0.8.6i comes up with an error message: Failed to create a status bar
The UI renders all messed up and it crashes when loading a file

smeezekitty wrote:

I will pull the USB card when I get a chance.

Disabling it in Device Manager ought to be sufficient, if it has anything to do with the problem.

I cannot get VLC to work right.
Version 0.7.2 installed, but when I try to play a video, the time bar
moves but it displays a black window with no sound.

I guess that's the oldest version you can find? Does it do the same thing in both Windows 95 and Windows 98? http://toastytech.com/guis/miscb.html suggests using 0.8.6d.

There should be an option in one of the menus to display diagnostic messages. There's probably some sort of video-output setting that needs to be changed.

Still no luck with VLC.
Under 95:
DirectX video output - Freeze
Direct3d video output - Crash
Windows GDI video output - Audio, black video
OpenGL video output - Audio, black video

I just discovered Windows 95 was using something called activemovie instead of media player for mpeg and it seems smother
Removing the USb did help a bit though

I think you need hardware overlay output. Virge has hardware video scaling and color space conversion with overlay. Windows Media Player should use it AFAIK. It could be that Win98 is not using overlay for some reason, a Directshow problem as surmised or a new incompatibility with 486s.