The VideoLAN Forums

No idea where to report specific disks not working right w/ VLC, so I'm just going to list it here. I only have a Windows box that runs VLC (my Linux machines are completely headless and console-only. No Xorg), so in reality, I must assume this is a Windows-specific issue with these discs. Yell at me if I needed to put them elsewhere.

Babylon 5, Season 1, Disc 3, DVD skips horribly on opening in VLC. No idea how to troubleshoot this, so I'm open to suggestions.
Also reported once long ago, but Battlestar Galactica, Razor Extended also has issues. Universal inter-mixed the extended scenes improperly into the disc timeline, so watching it on VLC, if you fast-forward, then rewind, you can actually jump into the middle of one of these extended scenes. It's weird pretty weird. I have another DVD player that doesn't cope with the format as well, so largely, it's Universal's fault for being sloppy, but I thought I'd mention it.
And, Ironman's DVD had problems too. Last I checked, anyways. I think I was running 0.9.x by then.


The other nit, is I'm on Server 2008 (a.k.a., Vista) x64, and that means you get Data Execution Prevention permanently enabled (joy). Well, that seems to frequently target VLC. I've got it added to the DEP block list, but because VLC's "update" method is kind of crude (in my opinion), the uninstall/re-install approach means that, if you don't go and add it back to the DEP block list, it'll likely crash on you again. Yeah, minor, nits, but worth pointing out.

I suppose the avoidance of DEP is difficult? I've heard rumours that the way that many video players operate, and the kind of scribbling around in memory that they do makes them favourite targets of DEP (DivX Player comes to mind).

If you can provide us sample file from that DVD, someone might be able to fix those issues. My 32 bit Vista doesn't complain about DEP at all. But if Data Execution Prevention (DEP) gets activated, there is usually coding/compile error in code. Debugging is kind of hard because VLC is compiled with Cygwin and Microsoft Debug tools don't understand Cygwin generated code properly.

Try this 60MB VOB here:
http://drop.io/kvfng8f

All the rest are at 100MB+ (several at 1GB), so this was the only "small" one that also exhibits the problem. This is from the Babylon 5, Season 1, Disc 3 DVD. I'll have to look at Ironman and BSG: Razor later (razor is probably impossible, given it looks to be a timeline-syncing issue, and would need the entire DVD).

No crash in here, but the stream is corrupted. Have you updated your DVD ripping software to latest version?

No crash in here, but the stream is corrupted. Have you updated your DVD ripping software to latest version?

I didn't use anything to to "rip" that. That's a VOB file copied straight off the DVD from the VIDEO_TS folder via Windows Explorer. It plays the exact same straight off the DVD (although the DVD plays a different file upon playback, the effects are the same).

You cannot copy commercial disks to harddrive without ripping software. So you must have tool like AnyDVD or DVDfab decrypter installed.

You cannot copy commercial disks to harddrive without ripping software. So you must have tool like AnyDVD or DVDfab decrypter installed.

Well, I put the disc into my drive, opened Windows Explorer, went into E:\VIDEO_TS, and copied the VOB right out and right onto disk. If it was supposed to be encrypted or locked or something...well, I guess WB skipped on that part when making the B5 discs. Not the first time a company's been cheap with producing their products.

However, a very weird thing: I had to reboot the other day because Windows just went to crap (no surprise), but now both the VOB and the Disc play fine. Bloody weird. I think there was some kind of silent corruption in memory. I had something similar happen with Winamp a few weeks ago, so I think there's some really subtle flaw in Vista's memory code with regards to multimedia (technically, this is Server 2008 I'm running, but it sits on top of the Vista SP1 kernel architecture).

But I know the Battlestar Galactica: Razor disc still doesn't play right. I think the problem for that is more on Universal's doorstep for trying to be fancy, but if one of you guys who writes the code for VLC comes across that disc one day, you might want to try it in VLC and see if you get the same effect that I get with it.

I haven't tried Ironman recently either....so I don't recall if it's working right or not.