Street Fighter 4 combos help!!!!

I was a casual alpha 3 player and decided to try out SF4 for the pc along with the standard d-pad controller. I have serious trouble executing simple combos, for example Sagat's normal trial 4. The first combo you have to do is jumping HK, crouching MK, cancel into tiger knee crush, cancel into tiger genocide. The first two come out fine, usually. But every time I input tiger knee crush into the controller, Sagat instead throws a tiger shot and immediately after a tiger genocide. It seems that no matter how fast I input tiger knee crush, it never comes out. And it seems weird how combos are done. I was on Sakura, and I tried one of her trials, which started with jumping HP, then MP, followed by some other commands. I didn't have too much of a problem, but just for the hell of it I tried to see what exactly is the window of time for executing a combo - I went in with jumping HP then instead of mashing MP, I just pressed it once. And no matter how fast I did it or how long I waited to press MP once, it NEVER combo'd - I would always have to press MP 2 or 3 times after the jumping HP before it would work. Any explanation would be nice... And on other modes, my combos would, once out of every 3 times, not work and do some other move instead, sometimes to my benefit and sometimes not. Am I supposed to be able to input tiger knee crush perfectly into the controller and at lightning speed exactly 0.3 seconds after a crouching LK? How does this work? Maybe it's just the controller, but then again, I'm using the recommended one other than the arcade fightstick. It's mostly the same situation for the other characters. Can anyone spare some tips on how to physically execute combos using a controller?shel-mar

There's an annoying thing in SF4 called "input shortcuts." It's not the first game to have something like that, but it doesn't work well in SF4. That might be what's messing up your trial. As for the Sakura combo, the timing to link attacks is strict in most cases, as certain trials will demonstrate. Following up a jumping attack with a ground attack should not require any strict timing, though...maybe j.HP -> standing MP is different for Sakura? I don't use her, myself.

First and foremost, do yourself a huge favor and get rid of the controller immediately!I don't literally mean to say that it should be thrown into the trash or anything like that, but to set it aside. The XBox 360 controller isn't that great when it comes to fighting games in general, especially on the system. Instead, should you have the available funds to do so, go out and buy yourself either the standard edtion or even better, the tournament edition stick. Trust me, your game will improve tremendously and you'll no longer have to struggle with the inconsistences and nusiances of the controller ever again, especailly for Street Fighter IV.

Second, some of these combos are very strict with timing. As I learned recently in one of the trials, you have to wait at least a glance of a second right after a move, like the MP, before you can execute the next move. It will connect if done properly. Of course, there are cases when the "input shortcuts" do cut into play. King9999 is correct on this - they don't work very well and they screw up your timing big time. So let me pass on something to you that ShenLongBo taught me - take it slow with your movements. Don't try to rush everything, for your combos will not work most of the time. It also helps to do the combos on one half and try the other half so that you can understand how the combo can be pieced together.

That's my advice for you. Good luck!