VLC Player gets stuck when a DVD option loads a text screen

[Navaros]

When I play DVDs in VLC Player, VLC Player always gets stuck every time I start a DVD option that loads a text screen before the option I've chosen starts playing.

For example, right now I have a DVD of The Shield Season 3 in my DVD drive. When I try to access deleted scenes for play in VLC Player, they work fine for the scenes that have no text appearing first.

But some of the scenes have a black screen come up first, with white text on it, that says the title of the episode, and the actors who are playing in the deleted scene who were not credited elsewhere. Every time a text screen like this comes up, the playing time never increases. It gets forever stuck at 0:00:00. The text screen stays up forever. There is no way to make this portion of the DVD play in VLC Player.

I recall this happening on other DVDs in the past too, also caused by choosing DVD options that initiate text screens that come up before the playback starts. I believe one happened with a movie DVD when a disclaimer from the movie studio that the Director's commentary opinions about a deleted alternate ending did not reflect their opinions. That text screen got VLC Player stuck in the same exact way as in my first example.

Please advise me on what is causing this problem, and how I can fix it and watch these problematic portions of DVDs with VLC Player.

Thank you.

[VLC_help]

You could try nightly builds to see if they work better.
http://nightlies.videolan.org/

Did you try with Menu option or without it?

[Navaros]

I've been trying with the Menu.

When I try with the Navigation tab and scrolling down to a Title or Chapter option, all it does is load the timer for what I've selected, then never plays. And the video screen disappears. And that is for any and every portion of the disc, not just the text screen portions that are causing me the issues listed in the original post.

If I try to explore the disc with WIndows Explorer, whenever I click on a file on the disc I get the message popping up by Windows XP that says: "explorer.exe - Application Error. The exception Integer division by zero (Oxc0000094) occurred in the application 0x1d1d89b. Click on OK to terminate the program"

Therefore, not using the Menu just raises other issues.

[VLC_help]

You have old AnyDVD or similar software installed that might cause explorer crashes when browsing DVD file structure?

[Navaros]

I just checked and I did have an old trial version of AnyDVD installed. I uninstalled it and the problems still remain the same afterwards.

I noticed I had an old "PowerDVD XP" disc laying around, so I installed that to see if it had the same problems with playing DVDs with that. With the PowerDVD software, I get the same Integer error before any part of the disc loads, and I am unable to play the disc in any way with PowerDVD XP; not even from the Menu (like I can from VLC player, except for portions that have the text screen).

I can't try playing it in Windows Media Player because for some reason my DVD drive region is not set, and whenever I try to set it, it doesn't "take". Windows always reads my DVD drive as having no region selected. So WMP is not recognizing any Region at all, and hence won't play any DVDs. Had that particular problem for years across a couple of different computers with the same DVD drive in them. Since VLC Player bypasses that problem, that is one of the reasons I switched to VLC Player in the first place.

[VLC_help]

You have installed hacked firmware for your DVD drive?