Songbird lags then freezes on mp4s. please help

I have previously posted about the type of app Im looking for, for my media archiving needs, but for now Im thinking songbird might do until I have time to tinker in the developers chair... BUT im running into a problem.

I have my hard drive with 1080p videos. I trying to use an program/app like iTunes for specific reasons, but when I tried to use itunes, the video started off extremely laggy, and then just froze all together. I thought it might be because of the directory structure or something... so then I decided to install portable apps, and then songbird right onto the external drive the videos are on. Meets my needs for the time being... but I immediately ran into the same thing itunes did. They are primarily 1080p h.264 mp4s. They work perfectly fine with Media Player Classic. Does anyone have any suggestions?