How to Improve the Viewing of Streaming Movies

Find out how you can improve your computer's streaming video experience.

Streaming content both live and on demand helps to preserve your hard drive space. You can view your media as it downloads, as opposed to waiting until the movie has completely downloaded. But if there are problems impeding the delivery of your streams, you could experience choppy and virtually unwatchable content. But before you rush out to upgrade your memory and processing power, there are a few measures that you can take to smooth out your choppy or pixelated video streams.

Instructions

1. Close any unnecessary browser window or tabs, along with any other programs that could be consuming a large amount of your computer's RAM (Random Access Memory).

2. Ensure that your version of Adobe Flash is up-to-date. With cross-platform support unparalleled by any other format, Adobe Flash, and its variants, are the most common type of streaming media you're likely to come across. Visit Adobe's site for a free version check, and an upgrade if necessary (see Resources).

3. Update your computer's audio and video codecs. Similar to maintaining Adobe's Flash Player, you'll want to ensure that any other media formats you may be streaming are using the latest version of its associated codecs. Installing packages like the K-lite and the Combined Community Codec Pack will ensure that all of your media files are backed with the latest encoding software (see Resources).

4. Increase the cache, or storage, size or buffer time for your streaming media. You can find the buffer settings for Windows Media Player in the program's "Options" menu, under the "Performance" tab.

References

• University System of Georgia: Improve the Quality of your Streaming Video Performance

Resources

• Adobe: Adobe Flash Player
• CNET: K-Lite Mega Codec Pack
• CCCP: Combined Community Codec Pack