Street Fighter 4 issue

I looked through the Street Fighter 4 thread and the Steam thread, but didn't find anyone else mentioning this although there are a couple of mentions in the Steam and Impulse forums...

It's a first time issue for me...

The cinematics are unwatchable...lots of artifacts and blurring of colors...(color blurring could be the artistic flavor of the cinematic just being rendered incredibly slowly)

Actual gameplay at 1280x800 with all the eye candy is running at a solid 60 fps...

The first time I've ever had in-game engine graphics running full speed, but pre-rendered cinematics are choppy...

I purchased SF4 from Steam this weekend, and found the SF4 movies (.wmv) and they play fine in Windows Media Player...but without sound since it looks like there are separate .mp3 files that run with the .wmv's when you launch the game...

Anyone else see the artifacts in the cinematics? Or am I all alone on these forums?

The Impulse and Steam forum users simply told the 'victims' that their hardware was about to fail/overheat (I don't think so in my case) or their hardware simply wasn't powerful enough (possibly...but isn't it crazy that I can't run a pre-rendered movie?)...the game says a 6600 is required (which I meet), and recommends an 8600...in DX9 space, I think a 7950 can at least keep up with an 8600 although the shading is done differently in hardware...anyway, I tend to find NBR forums more insightful and helpful...

Maybe I'm missing a codec...

Love the game, and it's a minor issue, but I'm uptight like that...(still trying to fix the Majesty cinematic issue...that looks like nVidia drivers have struck yet again...Impulse tells you that you have to have drivers older than 94.24...thank you, but no)

 

Everything is fine and dandy over here on my 9800m GS. Settings are maxed, 59.5 to 60 FPS.

 

Game runs fine at 60 fps...

But the cinematics are screwed up...and the FPS display still shows 55 to 60 fps while playing a cinematic...

Wierdest thing I ever saw...maybe it has to do with playing the game from an external USB drive...