Feb 28 2012

Fix Choppy Audio in VLC Player

Update: If this doesn’t work for you then read this post.

For a long time, VLC has been one of the well regarded media players with its ability to play almost any audio and video format without having to install special codec packs. It’s relatively small size in terms of disk space consumption and memory footprint comparison to other media players was also a bonus.

However, VLC has not been immune to bugs, problems and annoyances.

One lingering annoyance for a wide range of people is that of choppy audio when playing back video. This may vary from:

  • a period of unaffected video followed by a short gap of silence (repeated every five to ten seconds)
  • intermittent “glitching” in the audio stream (perhaps caused by other graphical objects moving or being created on screen like notification popups).

I found the first problem most pronounced in the latest version of VLC which is 2.0.0 while versions around 1.1.5 onwards suffered from the second form of audio artifacts. Both negatively impact upon a proper audio and video experience.

So how did I fix this problem?

I uninstalled VLC completely then downloaded and installed VLC 1.1.11 for Windows and so far it has done the job of eliminating nearly all of the glitches and has certainly addressed the problem of gaps of silence completely. Your mileage may vary but rolling back to an older version such as 1.1.11 may do the trick for you too.

Bear in mind though, using older versions of software may open you up to security vulnerabilities (of which VLC is known to be a target) so make sure you trust the files you about to play in VLC to avoid running into problems.

Boydo

My name is Boyd and I’m a Service Management Specialist with a knack for operational data gathering, transformation, analysis and reporting.

In 2012, I obtained my Masters of Science in Information Technology through the University of New South Wales @ The Australia Defence Force Academy (UNSW@ADFA).

I was also part of an online community known as the Panasonic Insider Crew in the capacity of “Insider Guru” for Panasonic Australia where I interacted with other tech enthusiasts and find out more about Panasonic's latest gadgets.

I love technology, gadgets, and the Internet and maintain a keen interest in these areas locally, nationally, and globally. I hope by sharing my views on these topics that people will receive an honest point of view from someone with a genuine interest in these topics.

I have also written and edited articles for Neowin - you can check out my articles over @ https://www.neowin.net/news/poster/boyd_chan

I hope you enjoy reading my blog!

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  1. Yeah the version 2.0.2 64 Bit and 2.0.3 32 Bit in windows that I tried both were choppy in AAC audio and MP3 were just the only two formats that I tested and now thanks for the link to the earlier version now there’s NO chops to skips, thanks again.

    • Tin M on October 3, 2012 at 14:50
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    Thank you. Reverting back to 1.1.6 version fixed the problem that I was having with VLC after upgrading it. Very Helpful,

    • John T on December 21, 2012 at 04:06
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    went back to: vlc-1.1.11-win32.exe
    it is working fine now (I’m on a Windows XP system.
    Thank you.
    I found this version here:
    http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/
    http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/1.1.11/
    http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/1.1.11/win32/

    • Dan T on December 11, 2014 at 19:23
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    Thanks, but this version of VLC wasnt able to play my video at all. At least the newer version of VLC auto-downloaded the correct codec upon opening the file. This version of VLC literally says “No suitable decoder module:
    VLC does not support the audio or video format “undf”. Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this.”

    I’ll be downloaded the newer version again.. at least that one can play..

    1. The article was written nearly three years ago so the solution was appropriate at the time of writing.

      That said, absolutely you should use a more recent version to enjoy support for the latest codecs and performance improvements as well as security updates.

        • Dan T on December 11, 2014 at 19:37
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        Thanks, although I still have the issue described in the first post “a period of unaffected video followed by a short gap of silence (repeated every five to ten seconds)”

        I will have to continue my search for a solution.

        1. Have a read of this and see if this helps you out:

          http://mingersoft.com/blog/2012/05/cpu-enhanced-halt-dpcs-and-audio-stuttering/

    • Doug Koempel on May 30, 2017 at 07:23
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    Dear friends,

    I’m writing this on May 29, 2017 and today have probably spent at least 2 hours trying to resolve a video playback issue that I discovered with a new Kodak camera PixPro FZ152 that I’d bought for my significant other. The file settings for the movie mode are quite limited as this is a simple, point and shoot-type camera. This camera saves video as a .MOV file – and there are no other file format options, e.g., AVI, WMV, FLV, etc.

    When I went to play back the first couple of test videos I’d taken with this camera on my Win 7 32-bit computer, I used the most-recent version of VLC player. The video seemed to play back OK, but the audio was intermittently choppy and distorted. I then tried Windows Meda Player. The video looked good, but there was absolutely no sound.

    I Googled the situation and monkeyed around with various troubleshooting tips offered on different forums for both my VLC and WMP dilemmas, but nothing worked. I then took test videos using different settings on the camera (720 / 30 fps; 720 / 15 fps; 640 / 30 fps, etc.) But the audio issues persisted as described above.

    I finally started randomly changing settings in VLC (in the advanced audio properties) just to see if I might accidentally stumble across a solution or workaround. But nothing worked.

    I was about ready to give up when I came across Boyd Chan’s fix, i.e., roll VLC back to ver 1.1.11. That did the trick! Thanks Boyd!

    But it leaves me wondering, why would an earlier version of VLC work; and the more-recent, updated versions not? Surely there must be scores of people trying to play .MOV files on current versions of VLC to no avail.

    1. That’s a very good question and, unfortunately, I really don’t have an answer.

      I can only think that in their regular code optimisations, the VLC devs have replaced legacy code that ran acceptably on a wide range of hardware with new code that may run fine on more modern hardware but struggle with older stuff. However, this would seem like a rather strange thing to do, particularly with such a huge install base that VLC enjoys.

      A few months after I wrote this articule though, I stumbled across something else related to choppy audio playback which, in the case of videos, ends up making video stutter as the player keeps the two mediums in sync. Have a look over http://mingersoft.com/blog/2012/05/cpu-enhanced-halt-dpcs-and-audio-stuttering/ and see if that resolves your problem while using a more recent version of VLC.

      Cheers 🙂

  1. […] computer has been having issues with audio stuttering and I’ve undertaken things such as downgrading VLC (which helped a bit) and also updating the audio and network drivers on my desktop computer (which […]

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