If you have a picture then you have the codec and don't need to add
anything. I have found that the "jump" is in the recording by not using a
fast enough SD card. You can either shoot at lower resolution or buy a
faster card. To check it out try the video on several computers and if it is
the same then it is the source file and not the playback.

I noticed the same thing with my daughter's digital camera which saves
to .mov format. The movies play very slowly, and skip frames. After I
converted them to avi they play fine. The camera I got saves to avi
format and the movies from that camera play as expected.

Not sure if this is an ubuntu issue, I'll have to try on some other
distros when I get a chance, but I'm guessing there is a less than
optimal quicktime codec involved.

If you right-click on a video and select Properties, then the audio-video tab,
you will see the details of how the file was encoded.

With my very cheap Moviepix camera, the files are .MOV, the video is H.264/AVC,
1280 by 720, and the audio is MPEG-4 AAC. The files play back fine on my
computer, which has a Phenom II X2 processor running at 3.2 GHz. The Sysmonitor
screenlet says one CPU is running at about 60% during playback.

If you use Video Converter to convert to another format, the videos might play
back better on your computer.

I've actually switched from the Moviepix, which only worked really well when
shooting outdoors in sunlight. Now I am using a Samsung F30, which uses the same
encoding but names the files .MP4.

Some more information on my situation. My PC is dual boot so I saved the
movie
files to a jump disk and rebooted to the Vista windows side. I had to load
Quick Time
and was able to play the movies and they played just fine. That to me says
it isn't
really a problem with my processor.
I am using what ever is default in Ubuntu 10.04 which is I think Rhythm. I
did some
searching and found a site which lists a lot about 10.04 release. There are
listed some
video editing applications so I think I will try a couple of them. On one
which was listed
was a statement about one to be default in furture releases of Ubuntu, so I
will play with
it and some of the other ones too.

I'm using Cinelerra. It has a bit of learning curve, but there are tutorials on
Youtube, and a web site called "Cinelerra for Grandma" which got me going. It
has a multi-window user interface, like GIMP, which some people find confusing.
I find it has all the features I want, and it rocks on my machine.

One thing though: I have to convert videos from AVC format. I use "Video
Converter," a GUI front-end for ffmpeg, and convert to MOV format. You may find
this is also true with other video editors.