What's wrong when a clip just plays a second and then freezes?
It's probably an encoding problem. If using Discreets Cleaner 6.0, activate the progressive field rendering tab.
The customer who discovered this used PixelTool's MPEG Repair to analyze his clip. You can download a free demo at: ftp://ftp.pixeltools.com/demo/Mpr_Demo.zip]ftp://ftp.pixeltools.com/dem o/Mpr_Demo.zip