sound and image skipping

[litelants]

When I try to read a DVD (actually, it seems that I have this problem for every type of file ...), image and sound 'skips' rapidly, making the movie impossible to follow.

I'm quite mad because this problem juste started : everything was working fine until before-yesterday ...

If anyone has a solution ....

PS : pour les modos, salut, je serais sur votre campus l'année prochaine ;o)

[zcot]

I think it *could* be Billy's fault...

try using a bigger cache when you play.. -if you are getting both video and audio chopping then perhaps you don't have enough buffer..

'course it could be some issue about what else is happening on the machine at the time... your cpu speed.. amount of memory..

-most likely though you just need to tweak with the vlc settings a bit and find what will work best for your environment.

you might raise the process priority(to request that the system treat vlc with more priority for cpu cycles).
ex:
Settings . Preferences . Advanced . Other . "Increase the priority of the process"... [Save]

also you mention "everything was working fine until before-yesterday".. have you changed some settings around and perhaps now have 3 extra hidden interfaces running at the same time? anything of the sort? You can reset all the settings to default by using the shortcut for that:
Start - All Programs - VideoLAN - VLC - "reset default settings and quit"

mention your cpu speed and amount of memory..

[litelants]

Yeah, I've just checked...

So, my CPU is at 1,5 Gigs, and I have 512 MO RAM.

I've tested vlc with saved videos in my computer, and it works quite fine.
So this 'chopping' problm only occures while reading DVD's.

I increased the priority, restored deffault settings (well, the other way around, actually ), and put the audio waveout module to win32.

Well, still, I've got the 'chopping' of my video and sound ....

Help, please !

[zcot]

yes, the computer should have no trouble playing the dvd's.

ok try this on for size...

Settings - Preferences - Input / Codecs - Access Modules - DVD with menus and/or DVD without menus

and you want to raise the caching value. maybe try 400ms or 500ms would be 1/2 of a second. 1000ms is 1 second.

and [Save]

with 512mb ram you could use plenty of buffer, but of course at some point you can overdo the buffering(where it gets into using the system swap file and swapping the buffers off to disc instead of ram and then in and back out of the disc swap file back to ram etc). So, just to give some technical idea, in general, you'd want to balance out the whole scene so that you are not defeating the whole purpose of using caching in the first place. If you COULD cache the entire DVD into memory then great.. but that's not going to happen.

see how you can get that to work..

[litelants]

Well then, I've tried to raise the cache up to 1000 (1 sec) ....
No noticible difference ...

The problem probably is not there.
The chopping occurs about every second, actually, and it's quite weird because i have the feeling that the whole computer slows down (mouse etc...)
So ... ?

I've just copied a DVD on my hard drive, to check it out

[litelants]

I've just copied a DVD on my hard drive, to check it out

My problem is the weirdest thing ever : the DVD does not work directly, but once it is copied, it's perfectly fine.

[Guest]

You have DMA enabled in DVD drive?

[litelants]

You have DMA enabled in DVD drive?

Yeah, I've just checked.

I've enabled DMA on the second channel, just to be sure, but I still have this weird chopping of sound + image ....

[mapo]

I also have the same chopping effect, and I can't find a setting that works.
It seems that Windows XP runs something every second that eats the CPU.
PS: how can you check if DMA is active on the DVD player?

[zcot]

yes, interesting..

also could be other programs as well.. think about this example.. "live" virus protector type programs constantly analyze what's going on and if you are taking-in or "downloading" files then they want to run these checks.. just a point to think about.

[litelants]

Well, I'm a bit desperated, so i've tried it out
So, i cut off my internet connection, then shut down my firewall +virus protection etc ....

Basically, I had 'almost' my whole RAM free (512 MO ...), and still

PS : For DMA, on xp, you have to go in the panel, system, controllers (i probably skipped a link or two), and then rignt-click 'properties'.
You then get a scroll-box ; one of the options is 'enable DMA if possible' (I'm not sure of the exact words, my version is in French )

[Guest]

So, anyone has an idea ?

I've been trying and still have not found a solution

Maybe someone knows of another media player, like vlc (free ) which can read DVD's from every region ?

[mapo]

Today I downloaded and tryed WinDVD and it worked smoothly. I'm not an expert, but I think that VLC has a timer to keep the frames in sync, and for me that's the timer of version 0.8.2 that doesn't work properly... who knows!
Massimo

[mlok]

I've got exactly the same problem as above - it's been a hassle for a month now, all started suddenly. Today, I've spent the whole day on this, so I'm going to give you more details about what's happening.

I have winXP, Pentium4 2GHz laptop, with 512Mb RAM.

When I try to read a dvd, vlc will start chopping video & sound after a short while (can be 1min or sometimes up to 5min...) I've noticed it tends to be worse when I check the "menu support" option in the "open disc" panel. So I use the non-menu option that start playing the movie straight away.

If I shut vlc down and restart it, it will chop from the very beginning.
The only option is to restart the computer!
And then, after a few minutes, same thing.

So I started to play with the vlc cache option. And something interesting happened. This is what I did :
1. I shut my computer down.
2. I restart it, so that nothing is in memory. (CPU usage : 1%)
3. I run vlc, (CPU is still very low) open disc, I choose dvd without menu support, I choose streaming with cache=10000ms=10s. In stream settings I choose "play locally". (CPU is still very low)
4. I press "play" and during 10s nothing happens as vlc is caching datas in memory. CPU usage = 50% (+/- 10%)
5. After this buffering, the movie start. It runs smoothly for a little while, a few minutes. CPU usage = 50% (+/- 10%). Good.
6. After a few minutes, CPU load climbs up to 100%, vlc using 80% or 90% of it now. Obviously, it cannot display the movie and take care of the buffering at the same time without enough ressources. So the display starts chopping sounds and image. CPU usage = 100%

7. The funny thing : I press "pause". CPU goes back to 50%, and the movie plays smoothly during 10s (that's what was in the buffer obviously) and freeze after the 10th second. Then CPU usage is back to 10%.

8. Now if I press "play" again, 10s buffering, CPU=50%
9. movie plays (chopping sound & image), CPU=100% all the time (the few minutes that used to be ok in the beginning won't happen again before I restart my computer)
10. I press "pause" CPU=50% and movie plays smoothly 10s. Then it freezes and CPU=10%.

I stopped my antivirus, my firewall, and anything that's not useful (apache, mysql-nt...) but that doesn't change anything. vlc is the one using 80% or 90% of the CPU.

It looks like the problems comes from buffering and displaying the movie at the same time. But why does it work fine for a few minutes? Bad Memory Management?

Is it vlc's fault? (I'm not sure about it because other players have the same problem, BSplayer is not even able to show a clean image and freeze after a few seconds...)

Is it WinXP?
Or can it be a DirectX thing? (I run DirectX 9.0c)

I hope we'll be able to get rid of this.


Mlok.

[mlok]

I forgot to say that there is another strange thing.
When I insert a DVD (say "Full Metal Jacket") the E: drive (my dvd drive) on winXP is then called FULL METAL JACKET (E:) in the File Explorer. That's fine. But then, even if I eject it or change the DVD, this name won't be refreshed, no matter what.
Could there be a link with vlc troubles?
Data that are not properly refreshed by windows XP or something...?

I think the problem come from XP, but I'm no specialist.

If these thing ring a bell, let us know, thanx!

Mlok

[mlok]

Pretty strange : I opened my notebook to clean the radiators which where obstructed by walls of dust, and since then the CPU can breathe much better (my notebook is a 3 years old pentium 4)... since then, the DVD runs smoothly!

I remember the CPU being on full load because of the DVD playing, maybe was it impossible for the CPU to work at full power since it couldn't breathe properly...

So, if yours acts weird, try to clean your PC.

Good luck.

Mlok.

[MrMonkey]

Has anyone found a viable solution to this problem? I have it too, and the really funny thing is that I used my DVDs on Windows 98 SE on the exact same machine, and it worked great, but since "upgrading" to XP, the chopping won't stop.

Please shed some light on this, anyone! :-/

[alan18]

I'm not certain this is relevant to this discussion but I recently installed vlc0.8.2 to use as a dvd player on Win2K and found that it suffered from the skipping and audio distortion every second. After trying various settings with no improvement I have now realised that it only occurs if I start from the default DVD (Menus) position and seems perfect if I select DVD. Unfortunately this means I have to disable Autorun so is there any way to change the default start point?

Alan

[rm]

I had a similar problem under win2k - I think your problem is that the DVD drive is using PIO (very slow), not DMA. This can happen even if the drive properties are set to "use DMA where possible" because of a bug in windows. See Microsoft KB article 817472 for the full details.

The quick'n'dirty way to see if this is your problem (and fix it if it is) is to uninstall the DVD player driver then reboot. This will automatically re-install the driver (it's a standard windows driver) and should reset the data transfer mode to DMA. The permanent way to fix it is to get hold of a hotfix from microsoft (see the KB article for details).

[kurkosdr]

The quick'n'dirty way to see if this is your problem (and fix it if it is) is to uninstall the DVD player driver then reboot. This will automatically re-install the driver (it's a standard windows driver) and should reset the data transfer mode to DMA. The permanent way to fix it is to get hold of a hotfix from microsoft (see the KB article for details).

My drive is using MultiWord DMA Mode2 (can't get it any faster, this is the drive's mode). Is this fast or slow? Some people say fast, some slow. No drop-out problems, but CPU usage is really high when playing a DVD (40% for a t2500). When I play it from hard disk (Ultra DMA Mode 5) all is fine.

Guess it's not VLC's fault...

[VLC_help]

Please, don't wave up threads that are 4 years old.