Video/audio Stuttering on Macbook 13

Question

Hi All
I have a mid 2007 Macbook 13 running OS X Lion 10.7.4.  all up to date.  Initially I had 4G's of ram ( I know it only reads 3 ) now I have it running on only 2.
Problem is video/audio stuttering when running movies. mostly netflix and or connected to a flat screen tv. on wireless or wired connection.  but it also happens just running youtube videos or videos that I have on the system mostly in .AVI format.   I could be running movies with VLC or quicktime and same ting.  I've tried turning every running program off.  like firewall, little snitch, sophos AV, etc.  after turning them all off I do a restart.  I have done permssion repair, checked the disk, run the daily scripts,  even downgraded to SL to see if Lion was too much for the system and nothing.  of of the 4G's of ram that I have.  I swapped them to see if maybe one or 2 of them ware bad.  when I install the operating system, I do a clean install.  delete partition, format, the whole thing and bring it up to date.  not all at one time.  disk permissions repaired after each big updated.  almost half the time the videos will run ok and than it starts stuttering.  when is doing it.  not even the mouse responds in those few seconds.  is like something is grabbing all the system memory for a few seconds at a time.  it has gotten to the point that the system completly frezzes and I get that black translusent window that says the system needs to be restarted.
I have about 40% free HD space.
Any ideas ?
Thanks

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
The behavior you mention is typical of MacBooks with the GMA 950 video chipset and 64MB VRAM.
The best solution I've found is to quickly pause the video and let the video load completely before watching, IF the website allows it and will preload the content. Not all of them do. Some sites automatically buffer before they begin playing.
Watch in a window rather than full-screen.
Watch content on your MacBook screen rather than a HDTV.
The Safari Extension "ClickToFlash" lets you choose whether to load Flash content at all. It also allows 'preferring' H264/HTML5 web video content when available, and seems to be a bit better than simply defaulting to Flash content for every website.
I have a mid-2007 MacBook 2,1 with 4/3GB RAM. It is the very oldest model capable of supporting Lion. After reading of performance issues with these older systems in these forums, I chose to remain on Snow Leopard rather than upgrading to Lion. Snow Leopard runs most things I do very well in 3GB. Lion really seems to need 4GB and would like 8GB, from what I read here.
You don't mention how fast your internet connection is. A faster internet connection MIGHT help some. A wired Ethernet connection MIGHT offer a bit more throughput than WiFi. Worth trying out, especially if you have a friend with a faster connection where you can try before you pay to upgrade.
Ultimately we're talking about 5-year-old computers. That's "ancient" in computer life cycles, and the best solution (not most cost-effective) is a new(er) Mac. It's not a problem unique to Mac. Old Windows XP systems lack the performance of new hardware running 64-bit Windows 7.
New or recent Refurbs with 4GB or more RAM, faster video chipset, more VRAM, faster clock-speed, Intel "Sandy Bridge" (or "Ivy Bridge" likely coming soon) dual-core or quad-core processor, and, yes, a hefty pricetag to match. Anything else is at best a temporary measure to buy a bit of time (a year, maybe?) until you can purchase a new(er) faster better Mac.
Message was edited by: kostby