Videos In Oblivion Are EXTREMELY Choppy/Laggy!

[Vanchatron]

I installed Oblivion yesterday on the following PC which has all the lastest drivers:

OS - Windows XP Pro (SP2 Installed)
CPU - Intel Pentium D 2.8Ghz
Video Card - 256mb Nvidia Geforce 7600GT
RAM - 1gb PC3200 DDR

When I loaded up the game I watched the opening video but it was extremely choppy/laggy & little black lines kept running across the video in all different places.

I then got into the game and I couldn't believe how smooth the gameplay was compared to the choppy opening video I had just watched. Three was no lag at all and I had everything set on high.

I'm just wondering why the videos would be like this if the ingame play wasn't. Surely my specs should be able to handle the videos shouldn't they?


HK

[pharoah]

turn off as many programs as possible net connection antivirus etc.oblivion loves a defraged machine to,but if the game is smooth i wouldnt be to worried.

[Vanchatron]

Well I tried all that but still the same problem. I'm not TOO bothered about the cutscenes, but don't want to miss out on any important information related to the storyline.


HK

[Indoril Nerevar]

Choppy videos is a common issue, and unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about it at the moment. You can download the latest patch and see if that helps, but I doubt it will. Unfortunately with Oblivion, there are just some problems you have to live with at the moment, and this is one of them. Don't worry - there's nothing important you're missing in the movies.

[Vanchatron]

Thank you Oblivion Master


HK

[Indoril Nerevar]

No worries. I wish there was an actual solution - my brother's system has the exact same problem. Hopefully a future patch will fix the problem.

[Vanchatron]

I heard somewhere that disabling fast writes in the BIOS may solve the problem but I'd rather just leave it as it is than mess about with something I know nothing about incase I mess something up.

I have a quick question though... In Morrowind there were no banks to store your things. Are there in Oblivion? I only ask because in Morrowind I had to choose a wide open area in Balmora and just dump my stuff there for whenever I needed it and it just got really cluttered up and hard to sort through.


HK

[Indoril Nerevar]

No, there are no banks in either game. However, I strongly advise you don't just dump your stuff in the open in Oblvion - the NPC's will pick it up and make off with it. You can purchase a house in each major town, and each house has plenty of chests where you can store your belongings. That's probably the eaiest way. If you're short on money, the house in the Imperial City is small and cheap - 2000 gold.

PS - I haven't heard of the fastwrites fix, but you can try it and see how it goes. It won't affect anything in terms of gameplay or stability. If it fixes the problem, let me know!

[Vanchatron]

Very nice, I didn't realise you could purchase houses in Oblivion. In Morrowind it was just a case of killing the owner and then stealing his house lol. Also, that's a nice touch they've added about the NPC's being able to steal stuff now. Thanks again.


HK

[Tiber Septim]

CODEC Reset Utility v3.0

Morrowind and Oblivion, unlike most other games, make use of CODECs to display the Bink videos (including the opening cinematics) and some of the sounds and background music. (CODEC = COder/DECoder, which allow your computer to understand the various video and audio file formats; also known as DirectShow Filters.) Unfortunately, some CODECs cause problems for Morrowind and Oblivion, and what's worse is that nobody has been able to come up with a good list of CODECs that are known to cause these problems. This utility is primarily dedicated to the Elder Scrolls community for assistance in troubleshooting this problem. It is designed to remove registry references to all CODECs from your system and reinstall the references for only the ones that come with Windows. As long as the files that make up the default set of CODECs is good (and they usually are), this will almost guarantee that Morrowind and Oblivion will run, free of CODEC problems. Be sure to read the enclosed readme.rtf file completely before you use it. Please direct questions about this subject and/or tool via PM to nightmare2013 on the Elder Scrolls forums.). Now also supports Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

Link to download Nightmare2013's Codec Cleaner -> Link


Give it a try, it can't hurt and at worst you will just have to re-install your audio drivers and any custom video codecs you may have installed (aka DivX).

Be sure to carefully read the 'ReadMe', it has directions on how to use the program properly.