Shoddy DVD playback

Sorry but yet another puter question form me Anyone would think I was obsessed

My computer plays all kinds of video files seamlessley (sp?) and I think I have every codec I need but if I play a DVD be it through, Win dvd 4, real player or windows media player - the film get to around 40mins to an hour in and then it stalls for anything from 5 seconds to 30 seconds. Casn get quite annoying if its a long film and it stalls every 10 mins sometimes more

I presume it is some kind of temporary files that are getting full or some kind of buffer that dosen't buffer enough but I havent a clue how to remedy it.

Does anyone have the same problem with just dvd playback or know how to change the settings to stop this.

Special prize for anyone who helps me solve this baby

Or maybe I should just find myself a techi website forum without lovely spinners

mate,
is the problem isolated to simply 1 dvd or all dvds? it may just be the one movie.
if not,
-try to extend your software and harware buffers for dvd playback.
-activate your DMA channels for your dvd drive
-also, is your OS on virtual memory? leave it on system controlled.
-mayhap ya need more system ram.
-is your processor + vga card up to it?
-even without dedicated decoding card a software player should suffice - powerDVD 3.0 is sooo nice!!

hope this yelps!

Dude, your hyper helpfull today, dont you need some sleep yet?

Problem is all dvds!

Dunno how to extend my hardware buffers for dvd playback on XP

DMA channels? erm, help?

System controlled memory? erm, help again?

I have 256 DDR ram, 1.8ghz Athlon and a 32MB Radion Rage pro card

does that yelp you at all?
cheers
Liam

[ 04. June 2003, 23:52: Message edited by: TEMPEST ]

(This thread is still quite relevent to HoP cos some of the vids here are avialable in DVD and conceivably peeps out there would sometimes view said dvds from a 'puuter)

forgot to ask - has it worked before, or has it only stopped working 'properly' now?

perhaps all your DVDs have a longish 'layer change' pause in their data (unlikely)

your setup sounds leet, so it is not likely that your problem is hardware obseletion.

under computer devices, the default 'hardware buffers' setting for your DVD drive should be maxed anyhoo (unlikely to have been OS set to anything lower..) under same DVD drive settings, put a tick under 'DMA' enabled. (this allows for faster drive access)

..but the problem relates to not the speed of the drive reading (which, by your accounts is reasonable), but the pauses of said reading.

which means the culprit is a buffer setting.
DVDs are encrpyted .VOB files, translated into a video strem - a stream that requires an allocation of memory; a buffer.
Either your OS has a buffer setting that is too low to handle too long a DVD session, or your DVD software is the one with the too-small buffer.

if all the video player programs you've tried exhibit the same stall at the same point in a DVD, then it is likely that it's your OS settings is the culprit, cus all those programs can't all be not-working in the same way by co-incidence.

maybe the buffer backlog is caused by your DVD-rom drive being in the same IDE Channel/Cable in your box - check if the DVD-ROM ribbon cable to the motherboard is also connected to a hard-drive. if they are, put them on separate IDE ribbon cables. yasee, if two heavily acccessed drive operate on the one cable, data packet collisions are more prevalent, and may slow a drive down at points, causing full buffers and undesirable playback issues.

see how ya go...

a) ask it really nicely and promise you will never call it "a ****ing piece of crap whihc is as fast as a load of tortoises stampeding through treacle

b) clear some space on your hard drive

c) defragment your hard drive.

d) if all else fails...kick it square in the motherboard.