VLC 2.0.1 temporarily freezing

[aardvark_65]

Hi, I have Win XP Pro SP3, and have installed VLC version 2.0.1. I have ripped a few of my DVDs to ISO files with DVD shrink. When I play one of the ISO files in VLC, at 3 places in the movie it temporarily seems to freeze (for about a second or so), and then continues playing – but it has skipped a second or so of the movie. It’s not a DVD shrink issue, since if I play the original DVD directly, the same thing happens. It always happens at the same 3 places.

The same DVD (and ISO file) play O.K. in Windows Media Player and Dell Media Experience (using DVDfab virtual drive to play the ISO file in both cases), so it would appear not to be an issue with the DVD/ISO file. I haven’t noticed a problem with other ISO files, but I haven’t yet used VLC very much to play ISO files (or real DVDs).

I also tried playing the ISO file in VLC using DVDfab virtual drive, i.e. pointing VLC at the virtual drive rather than directly at the ISO, but it still freezes at the same 3 places.

I saw in the VLC FAQ that playback issues could happen because the CPU is not fast enough. My Dell Inspiron 9200 laptop is now 7-8 years old, with processor speed 1.70GHz and 2GB of RAM. Could that be the problem? Might I have better playback with an older version of VLC, which might have lower hardware requirements? If so, could you recommend a particular earlier version?

[Lotesdelere]

Might I have better playback with an older version of VLC, which might have lower hardware requirements? If so, could you recommend a particular earlier version?

Try with version 1.1.11 maybe.

[aardvark_65]

Hi, I uninstalled version 2.0.1 (including deleting all preferences etc, to get a clean install) and installed 1.1.11. However the problem is still there, if anything it’s slightly worse, and now an FLV video that played O.K. in 2.0.1 has a couple of slight glitches in 1.1.11 (a different FLV video with lower video resolution played O.K.). Hence I have reinstalled 2.0.1

I forgot to mention in my original post that I tried disabling video acceleration in the preferences, and then disabling framedropping (both individually, and then disabling both together), but it didn’t make any difference. While I had 1.1.11 installed I also tried it in 1.1.11, but again no difference.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

[Lotesdelere]

Your CPU should be fast enough for playing DVDs so it seems to be a system issue, video/audio drivers and/or drives (check if DMA is enabled).

You can try another video output module:
http://wiki.videolan.org/WindowsFAQ-2.0 ... _output.3F

and/or try another audio output module:
http://wiki.videolan.org/WindowsFAQ-2.0 ... _anomalies

You can also try to enable or disable some video options such as Overlay and/or Hardware YUV -> RGB conversions.

[Chrisi22]

Where the FAQ 2.0 says:

For Windows XP and younger you can try DirectX 3D, DirectX, OpenGL and Windows GDI video output modules. With Windows Vista and with Windows 7, both DirectX and Windows GDI output modules will disable Aero, so if you want to use Aero, please use DirectX 3D (should be default).

You'll have to experiment w/ output modules to find one(s) that work w/ your GPU / graphics. If using a GPU & read in the specs / drivers release notes that it supports certain ones (listed in VLC drop box in Prefs/Video/Output Modules), then try those.

[aardvark_65]

I tried all the recommended video output modules, then all the recommended audio output modules, then various combinations of them, but none of them resolved the problem. I also tried a few combinations of enabling and disabling a few video options, but again nothing fixed the problem.

I tried running VLC from the command line, loading the offending ISO file and bypassing the DVD menus to start near one of the glitches, e.g.

vlc --start-time=2260 file:///f:\data\dvd\AIR_FORCE_ONE.ISO#1

I was doing this to try and speed up my tests, since I was doing a lot of them. However I found that when I bypassed the DVD menus as above, the glitches didn't appear (??). Removing the start time but leaving the "#1", i.e. still bypassing the menus but starting at the beginning of the actual movie, also resulted in the glitches not appearing.

I also tried --high-priority, i.e.

vlc --high-priority file:///f:\data\dvd\AIR_FORCE_ONE.ISO

but the glitches still appeared

When examining DVD title and chapter numbers with Windows Media Player, I noticed that all the glitches occurred at the end of chapters (in VLC - the movie plays O.K. in Windows Media Player).

[Chrisi22]

When I play one of the ISO files in VLC, at 3 places in the movie it temporarily seems to freeze (for about a second or so), and then continues playing – but it has skipped a second or so of the movie. It’s not a DVD shrink issue, since if I play the original DVD directly, the same thing happens. It always happens at the same 3 places.

The same DVD (and ISO file) play O.K. in Windows Media Player and Dell Media Experience

Just out of curiosity, after playing the file(s) in WMP, PAST the point of known glitches, if you stop the movie & in WMP, what does it show under View/Statistics/Advanced/Skipped frames?

Perhaps the same glitches are present when playing in WMP, but it somehow handles them better?
That said, I don't know for certain a way to get VLC to ALSO not freeze for a sec at the missing / damaged frames (as WMP doesn't freeze).
It definitely could be some setting (or even a bug) in VLC - esp. since you say the glitches aren't noticeable in VLC when played from command. I've no idea why bypassing VLC's UI would make a difference.

[aardvark_65]

I tried to get statistics in Windows Media Player as suggested, but unfortunately it didn’t work – I always just got “statistics are not available”, both for the basic and advanced tags. It didn’t matter whether I stopped the movie after the glitches, just paused it, or tried to get statistics while the movie was still playing. Perhaps this is because I’m still using the original version of Media Player that I got with XP – version 9.00.00.4503.

Note that it’s not whether I use the UI or CLI that determines whether the glitches appear – it seems to be whether I bypass the DVD menus or not, e.g.

vlc file:///f:\data\dvd\AIR_FORCE_ONE.ISO (i.e. displaying normal DVD menus) - glitches appear

vlc file:///f:\data\dvd\AIR_FORCE_ONE.ISO#1 (i.e. bypassing DVD menus and going directly to the start of the movie – title 1 in this case) – glitches don’t appear.

This has been consistent over several tests.