Why does my laptop freeze when I shake it while watching a movie?

[Charles123]

My laptop is equipped with hard drive shock protection. If I am watching a movie and the accelerometer senses a perturbation (me shaking the computer) the image is immediately frozen, but there is no interruption in the sound. Why is this the case?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

My laptop is equipped with hard drive shock protection. If I am watching a movie and the accelerometer senses a perturbation (me shaking the computer) the image is immediately frozen, but there is no interruption in the sound. Why is this the case?

Interesting! Afterwards is the video and audio out of sync? Maybe the audio is being buffered in a different cache or memory?

 

[Charles123]

"Afterwards is the video and audio out of sync?" Yes that is what happens, when it is subjected to some kind of shaking both freeze, but sound returns immediately wile image stays frozen.

 

[MATLABdude]

Video and sound are on different channels. Since there's so much more video data than audio (megabytes / second vs kilobytes / second) the program probably buffers (to RAM) more seconds of audio than video. When you hit a bump, the video buffer runs out before the audio does, and so the sound keeps on playing.

 

[Charles123]

That nakes sense! Thank you

 

[Charles123]

But why the sound returns first?

 

[torijana]

I have a similar problem, My laptop is not equipped with hard drive shock protection

 

[Mech_Engineer]

For the same reason- audio data buffers faster than video data due to the large disparity in data rates.