How to Repair Lagging or Stuttering Videos on PC

Videos have become an important part of our digital lives. You enjoy watching them on your PC. But sometimes they may stutter and lag causing immense irritation and frustration. You want the error fixed immediately so that you can continue to have an enjoyable video-watching experience.

Before you call in a technician to sort out the problem, it is important to know that this is a common error which you can fix yourself. But first, you need to understand why the issue occurs in the first place.

Why do videos lag or stutter? There is a wide range of reasons including the following:

Part 1. Symptoms and Causes of Video Lagging or stuttering

Symptom 1: Flickering or patchy videos.

Cause: Windows 10/11 slideshow wallpaper setting. If it has a short time interval, videos can skip a frame every time a new background comes on, hence the flicker. Outdated video drivers are also known to cause the error.

Symptom 2: Video glitches and stuttering

Cause: Background applications. These applications clog system resources such as RAM. Insufficient RAM can cause videos to stutter and lag. The error can also occur when audio and video drivers are outdated and Windows updates are not installed.

Symptom 3: Blurry, jerky videos.

Causes: Corrupt SD cards, incompatible or outdated media players, insufficient disk space, missing components, and defective encoding are the known culprits.

Symptom 4: Video and Audio Out of sync

Cause: Out of date or corrupt device drivers.

Symptom 5: Inaccessible Video File

Cause: Corrupted video file, a malware infection.

Symptom 6: Blank/Black Screen. When you click play, all you see is a back-screen video timer moving forward or stuck in one position.

Cause: The video file is corrupted or not all the parts were copied properly from source media, missing codec, outdated video driver, and malware infection.

Symptom 7: Video freezing

Cause: Corrupted video file due to malware infection or interruption during downloading.

Symptom 8: No audio or video

Cause: Missing, corrupted, or outdated audio and video drivers, outdated Windows.

Symptom 9: Video File Not Playing

Cause: The Windows Media Player does not support the video format, missing or unsupported video codec. Video codec is the software that is used to compress and decompress videos.

Symptom 10: Video playing slowly or sluggishly.

Cause: Slow computer with insufficient RAM, corrupted video file, browser settings, outdated media player, outdated video drivers, and corrupt video file.

Symptom 11: Video distortion (pixelated, stretched, or broken videos)

Cause: Missing, outdated, or corrupted graphics drivers, outdated media player, faulty CPU, hardware failure.

Symptom 12: Video quality degrades after Export

Cause: Outdated graphic driver, export settings that are wrong, file formats that are unsupported, incompatible codecs.

Symptom 13: Video playing only in Full Screen

Cause: Faulty media player, outdated video drivers.

Symptom 14: Media Player/System crash while playing videos.

Cause: Missing or improperly installed Windows video compression.

Symptom 15: Abrupt starting and stopping of Videos.

Cause: Outdated or corrupt video drivers.

Part 2. Effective Methods to Repair Lagging or Stuttering Videos on PC

Videos that lag or stutter can be repaired using either manual or automatic methods.

Before engaging in these methods, restart your computer. This will refresh Windows and remove any corrupted temporary data. It may just solve your problem. If it does not, proceed with the following methods.

Manual Methods

Step 1:  On the taskbar, in search box enter “device manager”, then choose Device Manager.

Step 2: Right-click the name of the graphics adapter, and select Uninstall device.

Step 3: In the dialog box, click Uninstall.

Step 4: Restart your PC.

Step 5: Windows will reinstall the driver.

Step 1: On the taskbar in the search box, enter “device manager”, then choose Device Manager.

Step 2: Right-click the name of the graphics adapter, and select Update driver.

Step 3: Select Search automatically for updated driver software.

Step 4: If Windows doesn’t find a new driver, search for one on the device manufacturer’s website and follow their instructions.

Scanning for hardware changes refreshes Device Manager to show any possible hardware changes for example connected or disconnected devices. If any issues with any device are found, the yellow exclamation will appear on its icon.

To scan for new hardware, click on the Action in the top menu bar, and then click Scan for hardware changes.

Wrong settings in the PC power plan can hinder smooth video playback.  Restore the power plan settings to default.

Step 1: Type power in the search box on the desktop, and choose Edit power plan.

Step 2: Click Restore default settings for this plan.

Step 3: Select Yes to reset the power plan’s settings.

If you set wallpaper settings on slideshow and short intervals between the slides, videos might skip frames hence flicker. Disable it or adjust the settings.

Step 1: Right-click the desktop and choose personalize

Step2: Open the Background setting

Step 3: Choose Solid Color

Step 4: Choose background color

This is to enhance system performance by maximizing all available CPU resources.

Step1: Press Win+R to open the Run dialog box

Step 2: Type MSConfig in the dialog box and press OK

Step 3: In the System Configuration window, click the Boot tab, and click the Advanced options button.

Step 5: Place a checkmark by Number of Processors and choose the highest number from the menu.

Step 7: Click Ok to close the System Configuration Window.

Step 8: Click Restart Now

This will fix any bugs and give you the latest security updates.

Step 1: Click the “Start” button. Type “update” in the search box. Click on “Windows update.”

Step 2: Click “Check for updates.” If updates are available, click the message and select the ones to install.

Step 3: Click “Install updates.”

Automatic Methods

Wondershares’s Repairit Online is a free web-based tool that allows you to repair your corrupted video files in three simple steps; add videos, auto repair, preview, and save.

You can use the effective Repairit Online tool to repair your files in 3 different formats: MP4, MOV, and 3GP. It allows you a 30-second video preview segment before saving.

You can repair up to 10 free videos per day, one at a time. The maximum video file size you can repair at one go is 200 MB.

How to repair video files using Repairit Online

Step 1.0: Open a web browser and navigate to the Repairit Online video repair tool. Click on the plus (+) button in the centre of the user interface to open the file navigator. Navigate to the folder that contains the corrupted video file and upload it to the website.

Step 2.0: The tool starts to repair the uploaded file and shows you the progress bar. If you uploaded the wrong file, or want to start over, you can cancel the process before it completes.

Step 3.0: Preview the repaired video file or download it to your computer, and play it using the video player you prefer. The tool gives you useful statistics for reference such as video size and resolution. If you want to repair another video, click Fix Another Video to use Online Repairit again.

Repairit Desktop is an excellent choice for those who want to repair larger video files and a bigger range of video file formats. Plus advanced options.

Like Repairit Online, Desktop Repairit enables you to repair corrupted videos in three simple steps; upload the videos, repair them, and save them.  

Do you want to try it out first and see if it meets your needs? No problem. You can download the trial version.

This tool has no file size limits. Unlike in Repairit Online, you can repair video files that are larger than 200MB.

In Repairit Online, you can only repair one video at a time. But in Repairit Desktop you can repair many video files simultaneously, easily, conveniently, and fast.

In Repairit Online, you can only repair video files in 3 formats: MP4, MOV, and 3GP. In Repairit Desktop, you can repair a wider range of video file formats: MOV, MP4, M4V, M2TS, MKV, MTS, 3GP, AVI, FLV, MXF, and INSV.

How to repair video files using Repairit Desktop

Step 1.0: Click on the plus (+) button in the centre of the user interface to open the file navigator. Navigate to the folder that contains the corrupted video files and upload them. You can also drag the files and drop them on the interface.

Step 2.0: Click the Repair button to repair the damaged videos in batch.

Step 3.0: Preview the repaired videos and save them to the desired location. You can preview the videos, if not satisfied with the quality, go to Advanced Repair mode.

If the videos are not repaired successfully, it means they are severely damaged.

In the Advanced Repair mode add a sample file which is a valid video file created with the same device or a file in the same format as the corrupted video. Once the video files are repaired, save them in a different location from where the original damaged files are stored.

Part 3. Tips to Avoid Video Lagging or Stuttering

Manual and automatic video repair methods can restore your video files. But they can be time-consuming and may not restore your files to their original state. It is better to prevent the error from occurring in the first place.

 It’s popularly known that prevention is better than cure. Here are some tips on how to ensure an enjoyable flawless video watching experience:

These updates fix bugs and other issues that affect system performance.

Ensure you have codecs that are compatible with your PC.

Wrap Up

Video stuttering or lagging on in Windows 10/11 is a common error. It is caused by many factors such as malware infection, outdated device drivers, and corrupted videos.

The leading cause of this error is corrupted videos. The solution to this problem is Wondershare Repairit. Download this effective tool today and use it to repair your videos regardless of how they may have been corrupted.