Is there a reason why my question has drawn so little attention? superuser.com/questions/1556233/… I thought video playback and Virtualbox would have a strong set of followers.

is it choppy oujtside of vbox?

@djsmiley2kStaysInside no it isn't

Even if I could narrow down if it's a problem with the guest OS (i.e. codecs corrupt) or a problem with Virtual box itself that would be helpful.

hardware vs software decoding it sounds like