# DVD Playback Choppy



## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

This has been driving me crazy for quite a while now!

In my IBM PC300 PL (in CPU specs) with XP Pro, I have problems playing DVDs. The video is horribly choppy in every player I've tried.

Drive is a Pioneer DVR-710. DMA is enabled. 

Any ideas?

(Everest Log Attached)

Thanks,
Joe


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## MysticEyes (Mar 30, 2002)

Why don't you fire up a DVD, open Task Manager and check your cpu usage %.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I don't see anything in that report that says the DVD is running in DMA mode. Did you actually check in device manager and see that the current mode is UDMA-2 or better?

Also, it's not the speedest system on the planet.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

CPU Usage stays around 60% sometimes more. In the device manager, both IDE Channels are running in Ultra DMA Mode 4.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

...and it used to work fine even when this machine had 256 MB of RAM instead of the 640 it has now, so I doubt it's too weak to handle it. One day I tried it again and it just stopped playing right.


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## MysticEyes (Mar 30, 2002)

Well the DMA setting looks good. I notice a rather new driver for your rather old vid card, have you updated it recently?

The DVD you show is rather new, I assume even an older one (less sophisticated copyguard) from a few years back also will not play?

Grab Nero CD-DVD Speed and try a Transfer Rate Test (F2) on a pressed DVD and see how it goes.

http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=download.html

Here's a DL test I've run.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I took a run at DVD Speed here, it's interesting that the speed plot is totally different. I wonder if that's because you used a video disk and I used a data disk?


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## MysticEyes (Mar 30, 2002)

JohnWill said:


> I took a run at DVD Speed here, it's interesting that the speed plot is totally different. I wonder if that's because you used a video disk and I used a data disk?


Must be, I don't have a DL data disc to try. The surprising thing is my DVD movie (store bought) took 25 minutes to scan while yours took 25 seconds?

With your Lite-on you could also do Nero's Quality test, many burners do not support this (my LG doesn't, my Benq 1640 does). Never tried it on a DATA disc, but with burned video DVDs it will give you a Quality score that will help determine if the media used is a good match for your burner.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I'll have to go get a video disk and give it a go, I didn't notice you used a video disk until I ran the test. 

*JStergis*, did you try running this test? What were the results?


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Here's a Video DVD, still a different display from yours.  I also had to fire up PowerDVD to start the video and set the region on the drive, it had never had a video DVD in it before. It choked on some odd error in the DVD-Speed program before I did that.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

MysticEyes said:


> Well the DMA setting looks good. I notice a rather new driver for your rather old vid card, have you updated it recently?
> 
> The DVD you show is rather new, I assume even an older one (less sophisticated copyguard) from a few years back also will not play?
> 
> ...


The drive is a few days old and the DVD was 'Pirates of the Caribbean 2', but I have also tried Patch Adams, Storm of the Century, and several others with the same result. It was doing this with the old DVD drive as well.

I will go download that and try it and post back the results. Thanks

I have a Video and a Vista beta data that I can try. I'll give it a shot.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 in this one. I got this error so it never finished. last word is "Authentication"

I am also running a download that's hovering around 90 KB/sec and have a few things open if that makes a major difference.

I'm going to try an older DVD and see if I get the same error. I will then try a data DVD.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

Much better-

Storm of the Century side 1


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

...and a data DVD

(Backups I burned onto a DVD-R


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## MysticEyes (Mar 30, 2002)

JohnWill said:


> Here's a Video DVD, still a different display from yours.  I also had to fire up PowerDVD to start the video and set the region on the drive, it had never had a video DVD in it before. It choked on some odd error in the DVD-Speed program before I did that.


What you are seeing is some read back problems, nothing serious, but not ideal. Try the Quality test with that disc, set it to 8X and note your Quality score.










Here's a nice media/burner match with a single layer burn (my first was a pressed DL). This is the Transfer Rate test.










Here are 2 older tests of Ritek G04's, the 2nd one is *after* a firmware upgrade. That's why I usually advise folks to have the latest burner firmware.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

MysticEyes said:


> Well the DMA setting looks good. I notice a rather new driver for your rather old vid card, have you updated it recently?


I think that's the last driver NVidia made with support for the Riva TNT2, it's what I've been using for quite a while-forgot to mention that earlier.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Well, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the speed of the DVD reading. I don't know what the choppy playback is from, but it sure doesn't look like it's where we're looking.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

Maybe I should mention that I had a problem where I couldn't use video overlays in VLC on this account, but it does work on the local admin account. I also remember that at one point every player skipped except VLC, but it soon followed. 

It makes no sense to me at all from what I have checked or what we've checked here. That's why it bugs me.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Perhaps it's time to look at video drivers?


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## MysticEyes (Mar 30, 2002)

Not too many other options other than to look at the drivers or possibly a corruption of your mpeg2 decoder.

I must admit this scan though is far from ideal:










If you could I would swap in another reader/burner. I would also try to rip a DVD to your HD (hopefully you know how to do this) and play it from there by clicking on the VIDEO_TS.IFO or use the 'Play from folder' option in your player. That would help determine if your mpeg2 decoder is functioning properly.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

Ripping the DVD now, 5% done

I think I have the latest drivers for my video card since they were the last ones made for it as far as I know, what I can try is uninstalling them, reinstalling them, then installing the latest DirectX (mine is 9.0c, but it was released well over a year ago)


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

Rips Done-I'll try to play it now


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

Okay-the rip is just as skippy as the DVD, so that makes me doubt the speeds from the DVD drive are an issue,

I'll download the next DirectX. I think it's something like 30 megs for the redistributable, so it'll take about 5 minutes.

I might have to run out someplace for a while so I might not post the results right away.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I think you're at least looking in the right section now.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

Completely Removed and installed VC Drivers (66.93) and updated DirectX. Still nothing decent.

Funny thing is, the machine can run graphics-intensive Screensavers and such without an issue Runs this without an issue, where the 1.13 GHz 640 MB PIII Lappy doesn't like it http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/desktop/xpscreensaver.mspx


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## MysticEyes (Mar 30, 2002)

A few new thoughts, how bout a shot at ffdshow.

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/codecs_and_filters/ffdshow.cfm

I think I'd try some older drivers also and one of the driver cleaner programs.

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745

And just for the hell of it go and set Vurtual Memory/page file to none as a test and try.


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## jp1203 (Jul 21, 2005)

Sorry for not responding for a while-I've been exceptionally busy.

I'm downloading DirectX 9.0c December now. Apparently I didn't get the latest last time. That's got about 30 MB and 5 minutes to go...

I'll then give that a shot and if necessarily try your last two suggestions.


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