Quirky DVD playback
January 6, 2006 9:49 AM Subscribe
On my Dell PC, DVD playback is kinda quirky... sometimes I can kick back and watch a whole film skip free, and sometimes (like now) it does nothing but skip and is unwatchable. I've tried lotsa things...
...including turning off every non-essential program to reduce RAM load, installing a variety of DVD player programs, and installing recommended codecs. Nothing seems to work. Then, suddenly, it will play fine. On the next go, nada. I'm stumped- thanks in advance for your help.
...including turning off every non-essential program to reduce RAM load, installing a variety of DVD player programs, and installing recommended codecs. Nothing seems to work. Then, suddenly, it will play fine. On the next go, nada. I'm stumped- thanks in advance for your help.
Response by poster: DVD plays fine on TV, no scratches. I have an external DVD burner/player, and the same thing happens when I play in there.
posted by moonbird at 10:02 AM on January 6, 2006
posted by moonbird at 10:02 AM on January 6, 2006
Make sure nothing else is running. Keep the taskmanager in the system tray and watch the CPU usage.
posted by Ferrari328 at 10:23 AM on January 6, 2006
posted by Ferrari328 at 10:23 AM on January 6, 2006
Is it a laptop or desktop? If laptop, is the fan operational? Overheating laptops decrease CPU performance.
posted by blue mustard at 10:26 AM on January 6, 2006
posted by blue mustard at 10:26 AM on January 6, 2006
When you say you turned off non-essential programs to save RAM, did you also open the Task Manager, select the processes tab, and look for otherwise invisible stuff there?
Because I have the same problem, and in my case, it is caused by a particular spyware blocker utility that sits invisibly in the background, so it doesn't show up to be turned off, I have to kill the process (or uninstall it). This spyware blocker does a momentary but CPU intensive check every minute or so, and if a DVD is playing, this will cause a skip.
Since you can't or shouldn't kill many of the processes, click on "CPU" at the head of the CPU column, so that the list of processes is are ordered by how much CPU they are currently using. This will make the list continually jump around and change as various processes periodically kick in, do stuff etc.
With the machine idling, watch the top three or so slots for a few minutes. System Idle should be at the top. everything else shouldn't be using much CPU.
My guess is that every now and then, a process will jump to 1st or 2nd place in the stack, momentarily using a lot of CPU (on my machine, a "lot" in this sense is anything more than 30%, but it depends on your OS/software specs vs you hardware specs). That process leaping to the top of the stack could cause a skip in your DVD playback, so use "end process" to kill that process before watching a DVD. If the DVD plays, memorize the name of the process and kill it each time. Or uninstall whatever creates it if you hate it enough. Or make a script that auto-kills it upon launching the DVD player if you're knowledgeable enough.
posted by -harlequin- at 12:33 PM on January 6, 2006
Because I have the same problem, and in my case, it is caused by a particular spyware blocker utility that sits invisibly in the background, so it doesn't show up to be turned off, I have to kill the process (or uninstall it). This spyware blocker does a momentary but CPU intensive check every minute or so, and if a DVD is playing, this will cause a skip.
Since you can't or shouldn't kill many of the processes, click on "CPU" at the head of the CPU column, so that the list of processes is are ordered by how much CPU they are currently using. This will make the list continually jump around and change as various processes periodically kick in, do stuff etc.
With the machine idling, watch the top three or so slots for a few minutes. System Idle should be at the top. everything else shouldn't be using much CPU.
My guess is that every now and then, a process will jump to 1st or 2nd place in the stack, momentarily using a lot of CPU (on my machine, a "lot" in this sense is anything more than 30%, but it depends on your OS/software specs vs you hardware specs). That process leaping to the top of the stack could cause a skip in your DVD playback, so use "end process" to kill that process before watching a DVD. If the DVD plays, memorize the name of the process and kill it each time. Or uninstall whatever creates it if you hate it enough. Or make a script that auto-kills it upon launching the DVD player if you're knowledgeable enough.
posted by -harlequin- at 12:33 PM on January 6, 2006
Also - how old is the DVD playing mechanism? If they're anything like CD-Rom drives, after a few years, they start to fail, manifested by being sporadacally unable to read a CD even though nothing is wrong with it.
I haven't had any DVD drives long enough to know if they die like old CD drives.
posted by -harlequin- at 1:54 PM on January 6, 2006
I haven't had any DVD drives long enough to know if they die like old CD drives.
posted by -harlequin- at 1:54 PM on January 6, 2006
Try this: go to start - control panel - system - device manager - IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Then double-click Primary IDE Controller, click "advanced settings" and check the current transfer mode for both channels.
Repeat for the Secondary IDE Controller
Do you see "PIO Mode" listed for any of the channels? If so, your DVD drive may have experienced read errors at some point in the past and caused XP to revert your drive to a slower mode of transfer (which could still allow it to work fine on low bitrate discs).
Check out this kb article for more info.
posted by helios at 2:40 PM on January 6, 2006
Then double-click Primary IDE Controller, click "advanced settings" and check the current transfer mode for both channels.
Repeat for the Secondary IDE Controller
Do you see "PIO Mode" listed for any of the channels? If so, your DVD drive may have experienced read errors at some point in the past and caused XP to revert your drive to a slower mode of transfer (which could still allow it to work fine on low bitrate discs).
Check out this kb article for more info.
posted by helios at 2:40 PM on January 6, 2006
Response by poster: Ok, here's an update, and thanks, everybody. First, this is a desktop, WinXp SP2.
Helios: I'm running DMA on both channels.
-harlequin-: The drives I'm using are 1 and 2 years old respectively. I've stopped both my spyware (windows beta) and antivirus (avast) scans completely. During playback while monitoring the task manager, nothing overrides System Idle Process, and while there are plenty of invisible processes, I don't see any huge level of activity on the system status icon.
k8t: I'll try downloading that, just in case there is some kind of codec problem.
posted by moonbird at 4:03 PM on January 6, 2006
Helios: I'm running DMA on both channels.
-harlequin-: The drives I'm using are 1 and 2 years old respectively. I've stopped both my spyware (windows beta) and antivirus (avast) scans completely. During playback while monitoring the task manager, nothing overrides System Idle Process, and while there are plenty of invisible processes, I don't see any huge level of activity on the system status icon.
k8t: I'll try downloading that, just in case there is some kind of codec problem.
posted by moonbird at 4:03 PM on January 6, 2006
Response by poster: Okay, now my external DVD-RW drive is playing this fine. So maybe there is a bug with the internal drive...?
posted by moonbird at 4:07 PM on January 6, 2006
posted by moonbird at 4:07 PM on January 6, 2006
Response by poster: Wow, that was fast. It's not internal, it must've had something to do with the codec. Installing VLC now has the film playing skip-free on both drives. You're right k8t, this is a sweet little player with good quality. What's weird is that VLC will play the disc fine in both drives (yay!), while my other DVD programs will only play skip-free from my external drive.... weird, but working. Thanks again all!
posted by moonbird at 4:16 PM on January 6, 2006
posted by moonbird at 4:16 PM on January 6, 2006
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It could be a scratched DVD.
It could be your player. What are you using to play the DVD? Try downloading VLC - it is a great media player.
posted by k8t at 9:54 AM on January 6, 2006