Why is the video performance in sreaming media mostly so choppy?

If the performance is choppy, or stutters, you may have a slow connection or your machine may be simply too slow to handle the stream. Typically, video looks poor at dialup speeds, with a reduced number of frames. You may also lack enough RAM to view a stream. Closing as many of the other programs which are running on your machine may help in that case.

• Bandwidth: The lecture video files tend to be around 175 MegaBytes for a one-hour class, which is a lot of information to send over the network. When the network gets busy, streaming files tend to freeze or hesitate. The audio generally remains constant because this data stream is smaller than the video.
• Memory and Processing Power: Your computer may lack enough memory (RAM) and processing power (CPU speed) to buffer and process the video stream. Closing as many of the other programs which are running on your machine may help in that case.
• Digitizing Process: For classes, we intentionally digitize the video with settings that help to make the blackboard as legible as possible. This means that movement will blur and stutter.
• Large viewing window: The larger window does have an effect on the smoothness of the video stream. You will find video clips on the web that have very smooth video, but they generally are only a few inches square. If you have a pop-up link, you can always click on the corner of the player (RealOne Player, Windows Media Player, etc.) and drag it to make the window.