Why Are the Videos I Transfer From My Phone Streaming Choppy?

Having your iPhone on-hand means you’ve got a great device to grab video of exciting events going on in your life. However, the device you use to share these events may make the experience unenjoyable if it shows only lagging and choppy video. To prevent this, you’ll need to make sure your viewing device supports HD-quality video. There are also some workarounds if you have a device like the Apple TV that supports direct streaming from iPhones to your TV.

PC Hardware Problems

Your iPhone records HD-quality videos, so the issue may be on your PC or laptop. If your computer doesn’t have a video card that can properly compress and handle HD video, then you’ll get a lot of lag or choppiness. If your PC supports HD video, changing your default media player to one that supports HD quality video will likely remove the lag.

Using Apple TV’s Cache

If you’re streaming videos to an Apple TV, you likely experience choppiness no matter the video length. Your iPhone doesn’t automatically compress your video, so you’re sending a large file over your Wi-Fi network -- which will likely struggle to handle the file size -- to the Apple TV, which also lacks some compression. You can avoid this buffering issue when you want to watch a video, however, by sending the whole thing to your Apple TV ahead of time. This will store the video in the Apple TV’s cache -- as long as you don’t watch content afterward -- and can then be played again without buffering and lag.