Unique DVD Playback Problem

[DVDTroubles]

Hi All, I've searched the forums for a bit, but so far haven't seen a problem like mine, so here it is.

I use ViedoLAN to watch DVD movies, and normally everything works normally. A couple of weeks ago I had just finished watching a DVD and put a new one in to watch. However, both the sound and picture were choppy when it played. I thought this was odd, so put the DVD in that I had just finished watching and it was also choppy on both sound and video. I then tried several DVD's which have played no problem and now they all appear choppy. I didn't do any other software/hardware changes when this problem occurred. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the program but that didn't work, and same thing with trying the various output filters. I'm completely stumped as the VLC player works no problem with any other format just not DVD's. I'm afraid I'm completely stumped so if anybody has any advice I'd love to hear it.

I run WinXP Pro, on an Intel P4 3.2 and am using VLC 0.8.6a

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Read the FAQ and remove your VLC preferences folder !

[DJ]

Hmm! This one may not be the preferences folder. It may be the dvdcss folder also located in the Application Data directory. You can also try erasing this folder.

[DVDTroubles]

Hi, sorry I thought I had posted that in my original msg. I also tried deleting the preferences folder in the app data directory. I'll try the dvdcss folder as well.

To me this seems more like something is corrupted??

Thanks for the replies.

*Edit* I just tried deleting both the vlc and dvdcss folders. I'm afraid it had no effect

*Edit #2* I also have the most current sound/video drivers for my system.

[DJ]

There have been 2 things going around lately, (like a flue or cold) this one comes from Peer to peer networks. It's the mysterious loss of your AGP or PCIe driver and or the loss of parts of DirectX.

[DVDTroubles]

There have been 2 things going around lately, (like a flue or cold) this one comes from Peer to peer networks. It's the mysterious loss of your AGP or PCIe driver and or the loss of parts of DirectX.

I've never used this computer for any P2P operations, nor have I dl'd or installed any new programs in a couple of months. In addition I regularly sweep my system for spy/adware as well as run active AV. If I have lost part of my DirectX how would I know (this comp doesn't use PCIe or AGP for video).

[DJ]

Wow your computer must be old! Even my real old AMD 500 used an AGP video card.

1. Run the DirectX diagnostics. It will tell you if it's working or not.

2. Try playing a commercial DVD using VLC and note the CPU usage. Post that here.

[DVDTroubles]

Wow your computer must be old! Even my real old AMD 500 used an AGP video card.

1. Run the DirectX diagnostics. It will tell you if it's working or not.

2. Try playing a commercial DVD using VLC and note the CPU usage. Post that here.

Actually this system is brand new Too bad it's bare bones with on-board video.

1) I ran dxdiag, and didn't see any problems, all of the tests also ran without flaws.

2) I tried a commercial DVD (all of mine are) and it ran the CPU up to the ~60-70% range with the usual stuttering.

On a side note I tried the same DVD on a colleague's computer (100% identical to mine) on VLC player, and the DVD played just with a CPU usage ~3% So something is definitely up on my comp.

*EDIT* I read in another thread about how the high cpu-usage is most likely a PCI/AGP problem if the dxdiag comes up ok. I went digging a little more and found that though my graphics are on the board it's treated as a PCI connection, I am now trying a reinstall of my PCI drivers, wish me luck!

[kmf31]

Obviously your graphic card is not working in the best accelerated mode (or at least with VLC) and therefore the computer eats up the CPU to do its best. On a modern computer 3% CPU is a normal value while 60% is too much.

On a Linux computer I would say you have to activate and use the XVideo mode (instead of the slower X11 mode). I am not sure for Windows but in principal it must be similar.

If you are sure the everything is okay with your graphic driver and configuration you can also verify if VLC is indeed using the best graphic mode:

Settings => Preferences => Video => Output modules

and here you select "Advanced Options" and afterwards you must see the configuration box for "Video output module". Maybe you have here a "bad" module and you should try another one, perhaps the direct X or opengl etc. I am not sure for Windows but you can try any mode you find there. After saving you restart VLC with your DVD.

[DVDTroubles]

Settings => Preferences => Video => Output modules

and here you select "Advanced Options" and afterwards you must see the configuration box for "Video output module". Maybe you have here a "bad" module and you should try another one, perhaps the direct X or opengl etc. I am not sure for Windows but you can try any mode you find there. After saving you restart VLC with your DVD.

Thanks for the advice, as I previously posted, I have already tried all of the different video output modes, but no luck.

On the updating drivers front, I dl'd and reinstalled the drivers (my version is still the latest) but it had no effect.

[DJ]

Using any output module other than DirectX will put all the weight of decoding on your CPU.

You are missing the AGP or PCIe driver for your motherboards chip set to make video acceleration work. I don't care if the chip set is on the motherboard it still needs the driver.

FYI You have proved that the driver is missing or corrupted in the tests you did as there is no other explanation.

Now, if you had said that the CPU usage was lower and the video was still choppy I would have said to check DMA for all your drives, but this did not appear to be the case.

[DVDTroubles]

You are missing the AGP or PCIe driver for your motherboards chip set to make video acceleration work. I don't care if the chip set is on the motherboard it still needs the driver.

FYI You have proved that the driver is missing or corrupted in the tests you did as there is no other explanation.

Ok, but I reinstalled ALL of the chipset drivers and Video Card drivers, so shouldn't that have solved the problem if it was a missing driver?

Wouldn't my DirectX tests have been laggy/corrupted if the mobo drivers were missing?

[Tombigel]

Sorry if you already answered this -

Did you check with another DVD program that your computer reads DVDs correctly without VLC?

Because if not, maybe the fault is on the DVD drive...

[DVDTroubles]

Sorry if you already answered this -

Did you check with another DVD program that your computer reads DVDs correctly without VLC?

Because if not, maybe the fault is on the DVD drive...

Hey, good suggestion! I don't have any other software that can play DVD's on this comp (WMP can't either), so I dl'd Movie Player Classic. It also stutters quite badly on that player.... so could this be a DVD player problem? On the other hand, CD's play perfectly in the same drive.....

This is sooo frustrating!! I don't understand how it can go from working to not working in the space of two minutes!?!?

[Tombigel]

As I understand DVD players have 2 read heads one for CDs and one for DVDs (I had a player that read CDs but not DVDs and this is what i was told)
So it could be that the head for DVDs is damaged.

The next logical move is to see if when you try to read data DVDs you have a problem, and if it's a DVD Burner, to see if you can burn DVDs.

[DJ]

This was true when DVD tech was new. But hasn't been true now for a very long time.

Try looking for another source for chip set drivers.

DMA or the drive shouldn't cause the extremely high CPU usage. Of coarse you can always transfer the DVD content to your hard drive and check this out for yourself. If the content is copy protected you will need a DVD rip program to do this.

[Tombigel]

This was true when DVD tech was new. But hasn't been true now for a very long time.

Are you sure about this? because i had this problem with a year and a half old drive.

The guy said one DVD played fine, and right after it another didn't, so it looks like a bit more then a software problem to me.
I had a similar problem once or twice (note that this is not only in VLC) and the problem was eventually the DVD drive

[DJ]

About 5 or so years for most manufactures. Most of these drives were pre RPC2. That is not to say that some of these drives are still not floating around or in use.

[DVDTroubles]

Hey guys, I'd like to try coping the DVD content, but it doesn't seem to like doing it, what's a good DVD rip Program??

Also, I'm a little leery of "other chipset drivers". Why wouldn't those that are supplied by my mobo manufacturer work, and more importantly, where would I actually find other drivers? I'm leery of this because my original drivers worked fine for months, and I've never heard or installing alternate drivers except in the case of graphics cards, where the purpose was to tweak a few extra fps, or help overclocking.

[CloudStalker]

Hey guys, I'd like to try coping the DVD content, but it doesn't seem to like doing it, what's a good DVD rip Program??

You could tryDVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0. I’ve been using it for quite awhile, and it works really well.

[DJ]

Hey guys, I'd like to try coping the DVD content, but it doesn't seem to like doing it, what's a good DVD rip Program??

Also, I'm a little leery of "other chipset drivers". Why wouldn't those that are supplied by my mobo manufacturer work, and more importantly, where would I actually find other drivers? I'm leery of this because my original drivers worked fine for months, and I've never heard or installing alternate drivers except in the case of graphics cards, where the purpose was to tweak a few extra fps, or help overclocking.

Preferably use the drivers supplied on the CD that came with your motherboard or obtain a (perhaps) a newer driver from the manufacture of the motherboard for your model. The same thing would be true if you purchased a system. The driver should be available from the manufacture of the computer for that particular series or model.

[DVDTroubles]

Preferably use the drivers supplied on the CD that came with your motherboard or obtain a (perhaps) a newer driver from the manufacture of the motherboard for your model. The same thing would be true if you purchased a system. The driver should be available from the manufacture of the computer for that particular series or model.

I went to ASUS and downloaded the latest chipset drivers (they were the same version as what I have currently installed). I then uninstalled my "old" chipset drivers and installed the new ones from ASUS. However this did not help.

I will try ripping the DVD to my drive and trying it from there.

[DVDTroubles]

Ok, I ripped the DVD to disc and played the .vob files with VLC. They play absolutely fine. The video and sound was perfect and the CPU usage didn't go above 1%.

So now I'm really stumped. Why would it just stop working from the DVD player all of a sudden?? I've reinstalled the chipset drivers, so that should have fixed it if that had been the problem.

Could this be some other completely unique DVD player problem? But if that's the case, how was I able to successfully rip the DVD from the disc??

[DJ]

OK! This is progress! Considering you say the machine is new, I wouldn't think dirty optics would be the issue, but this will make the drive read and re-read the same info and slowing down the whole process and it can become jerky, I don't know about the CPU going high but it might. You could try a CD/DVD lens cleaning kit.

The other issue is DMA for the drive and what Windows XP does to resolve group errors. The following link and then the subsequent Microsoft answer should shed some light on the issue.

http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm contains some useful info...

• In Windows 2000 only, read requests to ATA disks are sometimes issued with a time-out value of 4 seconds. This occurs when your computer resumes from standby. This might cause a disk time-out because drives typically take more than 4 seconds to spin up. This time-out value was changed to 10 seconds.

In Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, this time-out value is always 10 seconds.

• An alternate, less-aggressive policy is implemented to reduce the transfer mode (from faster to slower DMA modes, and then eventually to PIO mode) on time-out and CRC errors. The existing behavior is that the IDE/ATAPI Port driver (Atapi.sys) reduces the transfer mode after any 6 cumulative time-out or CRC errors. When the new policy is implemented by this fix, Atapi.sys reduces the transfer mode only after 6 consecutive time-out or CRC errors. This new policy is implemented only if the registry value that is described later in this article is present.

To implement the alternate behavior (reducing the transfer mode after six consecutive time-out or CRC errors instead of after six cumulative time-out or CRC errors), you must modify the registry as described below after you apply the hotfix.

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

Follow these steps, and then quit Registry Editor:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

2. Locate and then click the following key in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001

3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

4. Type ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess, and then press ENTER.

5. On the Edit menu, click Modify.

6. Type 1, and then click OK.


Follow these steps, and then quit Registry Editor:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

2. Locate and then click the following key in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002

3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

4. Type ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess, and then press ENTER.

5. On the Edit menu, click Modify.

6. Type 1, and then click OK.


Note The numbered subkeys that are listed earlier correspond to the primary and secondary IDE channels on a computer that contains a single IDE controller. If your computer contains two IDE controllers, the numbered subkeys for the primary and secondary IDE channels for each of the two controllers may be:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0003

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0004

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0005

To verify that you have located the correct subkey, verify that the DriverDesc value for the subkey contains the string value "Primary IDE Channel" or the string value "Secondary IDE Channel."

[DVDTroubles]

Ok, I went into device manager to check what mode my drive is running in DMA/PIO, and noticed something which I find quite strange (I have a screenshot but I don't see any way to post it here). Anyway, for both the Primary and Secondary IDE channels there appears to be two drivers for each, does that make sense (I'd only expect one for each)?