Video freezes during mpeg video playback using Phonon

[muellerp]

Have you tried to play the files with the "backend-" applications?
Xine and/or Totem-GStreamer - depending on your backend.

If this works, you then should try to play them with Dragonplayer (KDE 4.x) to see if they run generally with Phonon.

I do have issues with GStreamer with one of my datafiles, which work without any issues with the Xine backend.

[muellerp]

Additionally:
In case GStreamer is the issue: Etch is quite old and if you try running with the normal packages you only have the old GStreamer.
So either get a newer GStreamer version (helped me in one case) or just update to Lenny (which I consider stable for development purposes).