Hello,

Really at the end of my rope with Serato Video, and could use any useful suggestions other than 'you should buy a mac' (I've been that route, and it's crashes more than Richard Hammond after swigging a bottle of Jack Daniels.) No disrespect to you Mac users, but please - no thanks. Not interested in the Mac v PC tripe replay flame war.

So here's the story. Our goal right now is to get video playback of MP4's working flawlessly enough to be useful on the road.

For music videos, we tried lots of software on our test box - a heavily burdened SFF Dell Optiplex 5040. This tiny thing is 8gb/64b/i5 6500 3.2 and running win 7 pro. It's one of the last machines that can run that OS. As PC's go, it's sub optimal for even audio playback, it's got so much running on it. And sure enough things like Virtual DJ & Dex stuttered and
gave choppy video playback.

However, Serato - for all it's bugs and irritations - played perfectly, with an extended desktop onto two 60 inch screens. All using the onboard Intel graphics. To say I was gobsmacked is an understatement.

Over the coming weeks we tested it and tested it like crazy on that little Dell, and it was absolutely rock solid on video. Faultless. So we decided to invest in an optimised machine dedicated just to Serato Video - and that's where the trouble starts.

As most of the smart cookies here will know, it's near impossible to get a good Motherboard & Processor combo now that will run Win 7 Pro. They've pretty much designed it out to make it obsolete and force people to use Win 10. So, taking the view that we'd have to bite that bullet at some point, we did just that and built the following machine:

Board: Gigabytge H310M 2H REV 1.1
Proc: Intel i5 8600
Ram: 8GB DDR4 2133mhz
GPU: Asus/Nvidia GT170 2GB Passive Cooled PCI
SSD's for running and media, along with traditional HDD for mass media backup

So the machine was built up, WIN 10 installed, all drivers updated to their latest and greatest, Serato installed, all the tweaks detailed on the Serato Website were taken care of. Codec packs installed as per various posts in the forum here.

Unfortunately, I'm left with Serato video playing choppily, and I also see occasion issues with the waveform displays I never used to have on Win 7.

Now, and don't think me rude, I've done lots of reading on this subject, and there seems to be the typical old wives tale that persists 'It's Windows 10 causing all the evil here', and whilst I'd like to believe that, I know it's just not true, because the default media player in Windows 10 plays the very same videos perfectly and without any issues at all. In fact, it will do it side by side as Serato plays, and shows Serato video up as the villain here.

I grabbed my phone and shot the screen playing back a known good MP4 of Beyonce from Xtendamedia. In the top left Serato video window (the smaller one), the video can be seen to randomly pause/hang every second or two. In the large default media player window it plays back flawlessly and without any stutter. Which leads me to the conclusion the fault is clearly in Serato Video at fault.

Watchwww.youtube.com
(sound muted to appease Youtube Gods)

I've tried all of the fixes and experiments I can find. Codecs, optimisations etc. I've even pulled out the Asus/Nvida card and tried the onboard Intel graphics, but to no avail.

I'd like to think there's a fix for this, but I'm guessing I already know I'll have to find different software. But before I do that, does anyone have any ideas to get Serato to play videos smoothly before I start looking elsewhere for Win 10?

Thanks for reading through, and any ideas that may help.