This could be caused by:

-Too slow of PC or processor
-Slow harddisk speed
-Outdated or too slow of video card
-Not enough RAM memory
-heavily fragmented source file
-hard drive too full or fragmented

Is this a case of it used to work and now its not, or has it always done this? What is your processor Type and speed? Amount of RAM?

Have you tried to output to MPeg2 format or are you using Mpeg4 AVC? Win8 64-bit Pro Retail
Intel i7-4770
16GB DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24
MSI Z87-G45 Motherboard
ASUS GTX 660 Direct CU II OC 2GB GPU
1 TB RAID 1 (mirrored) Drive Array
Several scratch drives for video, TMP, pagefile.

I upgraded from PD 5 and never had this problem until PD 7. The video files were captured from my DV camcorder as MPEG2 format. I did notice that when I used the default video clip that came with PD7 I did not have the problem. Its format says MPEG1.

Using a Pent 4 2.66 Ghz with 768 MB RAM. I use an external HD with 20GB free.

Using a Pent 4 2.66 Ghz with 768 MB RAM. I use an external HD with 20GB free.

Sure. MPeg1 is less compressed and requires less processing power to decode, so that makes sense it appears smoother.

768 RAM is on the low side for video editing (I dont' work for Cyberlink, that's my opinion).

Also, using an external drive (is it USB?) will be slow unless its a firewire or eSATA or Gigabit ethernet storage. Try rendering it to your internal drive if possible, then copy on to your external when finished. That should be faster and improve your performance.

If there's not space, you should consider upgrading or adding a second internal drive to your computer which is much faster than most external drives are. This could help considerably. Win8 64-bit Pro Retail
Intel i7-4770
16GB DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24
MSI Z87-G45 Motherboard
ASUS GTX 660 Direct CU II OC 2GB GPU
1 TB RAID 1 (mirrored) Drive Array
Several scratch drives for video, TMP, pagefile.

Quote: I upgraded from PD 5 and never had this problem until PD 7. The video files were captured from my DV camcorder as MPEG2 format. I did notice that when I used the default video clip that came with PD7 I did not have the problem. Its format says MPEG1.

Using a Pent 4 2.66 Ghz with 768 MB RAM. I use an external HD with 20GB free.

Hi Derrick,

Hmm, I'm going to make an educated guess and say that the available free hard disk space and 768 RAM may be the source of the stuttering problems.

PD7 is doing a lot of stuff in the background, and this probably includes lots of swapping of files and using the disk drive for temporary storage while processing commands, files, and other stuff. The RAM is also doing a lot of swapping too, so more RAM may help too. For most people, they like to have at least 2GBs of ram on board.

Your disk drive may be groaning under all the load and is trying to keep up with all its house cleaning chores. Try using another drive with more space and see if this helps out.

You can probably borrow an external one from a friend so you don't have to shell out money just to experiment. Also, disk drive performance may be adversely effected if it is highly fragmented. Try defragmenting your drive and see if this helps too. If you only have 20GB of free space left, you've probably got a ton of fragmented files on there, unless you keep up with your disk tuning duties.