If I can record 1024x768 video at 60 frames per second just fine with the H.264 codec, why I can't I play back the video in real time (rather than 80% true speed with skipping audio to go with it (as if playing back at 48 fps))? I also cannot play back video of 1920x1080 at 29.97 fps from my camcorder (the M2TS original file is converted to AVI using H.264 as well), but again, I'm only getting about 60% true speed for playback (this plays back at about 18 frames per second instead of 29.97). Virtual Dub and Windows Media Player seem to behave the same way. I have the core i7-2600K processor which seems to be 60% faster per core than my previous system, but it's apparently not fast enough. Could it be that playback is not multithreaded like recording is? Short of attempting to overclock my CPU by at least 30%, rather considerable (I still need to replace the temporary RAM and get a better CPU fan first), are there any alternatives available?