I still get a similar issue but this time it's a strange popping sound with audio, same hardware.  It's absent while using the same laptop without harddrive encryption (using the default options from the Ubuntu alternative install).  I've noticed that every 7 seconds or so cpu useage jumps about 35% (while idle & while running the videos that cause the earlier problems so I'm assuming that it's the filesystem encryption/decryption that has an impact on audio quality in this case as the CPU is busy with filesystem/disk rather than audio?).  However, these same files that once caused the same laptop a few months ago to peg 100% cpu useage consistently are now down to only 35% to 40% total CPU useage (with the +35% spikes every 7 or so seconds as when idle) and video playback is stable in a window and full screen at 1280x960 resolution.  These are avi files encoded in "RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 640x480, 23.98 fps, video:  xvid, audio mpeg-1 layer 3 (stereo, 48000 Hz)".  If you need i can upload a file for you to play with to some repository.  However, they are about 140MB each which means i can't e'mail them.  Likewise, the odd thing is when I use a hi-def avi that I encoded myself from the local cable company (using MythTV and converted to avi) with a native resolution of 1280x720 xvid, 30fps, and mp3 audio, i don't hear any pops.  I'm wondering if now it's nothing but a poor encoding to the files totem is having issues with.  Let me know if you need the files themselves, i'd be happy to provide.  I'm reluctant to cut or reencode the actual files for smaller size in case any artifacts that would differences in playback would appear and invalidate any tests. --- On Fri, 9/4/09, Sebastien Bacher