We have a Dell Inspiron15 running Windows 10, 8 GB RAM, dual core i5, 2.3 ghz. In the last week, the background video starting pausing and transitions are much slower despite setting the speed to "0.5". We have not changed the configuration of the laptop. We are current with Windows updates. Can you tell me what is causing this problem?

What graphics card or chip are you running? And did you recently upgrade EW to 7.2.2.0?

What you posted about your computer doesn't really tell us much. There are over 10 generations of i5 computers with a few refreshes along the way with huge differences in how well they perform. Without more specific hardware information such as i5-2410-m and what graphics card/chip you are using it's difficult to be more exact, but it does sound like you are running a laptop with an i5-2410-m (a 2 core 4 thread second get i5) and it's integrated HD3000 graphics which doesn't meet the minimum required specs.

That said, they will quite often be able to run a FOH display with the Foldback option well enough at 720p with EW7 build 7.1.4.2. But trying to run full 1080p with motion backgrounds is normally more than they can handle, especially with 7.2.2.0 which requires a lot more graphics power than 7.1.4.2.

I already open a support ticket and abandoned trying to use this forum as I don't find responses fast enough to be helpful. On top of that comments made by other people are often more insulting than helpful. The comments left are usually brow-beating the original poster for not doing something the person replying claims to be obvious. For the record, I resolved the problem on my own.

I'm glad you were able to resolve the issue. Would you care to tell us what the fix was? That might help other who run across that problem.

And yes, I do admit that this Forum is a lot less user friendly than their old one was.  They do have a Facebook User Group for EW Support that many of us frequent. It's considerably more active and a lot more user friendly than this forum is.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2087084991602202/?source_id=378500525515268

I hope I did not come across that way. It was not my intent to do so.

Hi Don,

Our laptop in a Dell Inspiron15, 7000 series. It has an Intel HD Graphics 530 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M installed. However, I was surprised to see it only had 8 GB RAM. When playing WMV or mp4 higher resolution videos, there was no problem. EW had been using a standard format of 1024x768 because our screen was a 4:3 aspect ratio.  We have 2 projectors, both were set to automatically adjust their resolution to match the source. We use an HDMI splitter/amplifier and a 2x2 Matrix splitter to send the output to the different screens & TVs. When I connected a new HD LED TV as an output, not a fold-back but simply another extended screen in our lobby, that is when the problem began.

I discovered that the projectors had matched their resolution to the TVs. The laptop's display was then set to 1920x1080 to match the 16:9 resolution. However, when video backgrounds were played through EW, there was a noticeable "choppiness" in the video and transition were very slow despite setting the transition to "0.5". Additional testing with the laptop in standalone mode, no projectors or TVs connected, showed that EW background videos displayed the same choppiness. I updated all the firmware and drivers available but the same problem existed. Then I tried EW on a Dell 2in1 pc tablet I had. It has 16 GB RAM. There was no problem with EW displaying the same background video and the slide transition was as expected. That is when I concluded the laptop needed another 8 GB of RAM to handle the higher resolution of 1920x1080.

thank you

The GTX 960m well below the Recommended Spec for high res video playback thru EW7, especially build 7.2.2.0. It would be able to handle 1080p on 7.1.4.2 which uses a different rendering engine. EW adds additional overhead to playing Video files compared to VLC and other stand alone video players.  

That said, I've never noticed that 8 gigs is insufficient to run 1080p videos or video backgrounds on build 7.2.2.0. I have one computer in use at our Church that had an 8 year old i5 2500 4c/4t processor, 8 gigs of ram, and an AMD HD7870 which is about 20% more powerful than your 960m and it can barely handle 1080p on 7.2.2.0. I tried adding an extra 8 gigs of ram and it didn't change anything as the system was only using around 5 gigs total running EW. I replaced the video card to one that exceeded the Recommended Spec and it ran 1080p without issues even with only 8 gigs of ram. 

As a further test I tried that same HD 7870 in the new Ryzen 5 3600 6c/12t system I built for our projection system and even with 16 gigs of ram it struggled with 1080p. 

I would be interested in seeing what graphics are in that Dell 2 in 1. I'm not doubting your findings, but it doesn't follow any of the findings I have run across with 7.2.2.0 over the past few months which leads to Graphics being the issue with stuttering, lag, etc. on 7.2.2.0

Open up Task Manager while running EW and it will show you how much ram is being used by EW and also by the entire system. Even my home system with 32 gigs of ram only uses 6 to 6.5 gigs of the 32 to run 160Mbps 4k video thru EW 7.2.2.0, and that is with several browser windows open. I simply can't see where the difference between 8 and 16 gigs would make any difference unless you are running a lot of other things in the background. 

True, but you have to factor in how much ram Windows and the rest of the system would be using as well.

EW itself 7.2.2.0 can only address up to 4 gigs on a 64bit system and 3 gigs on a 32bit system. 7.1.4.2 and previous can only address 2 gigs no matter what.