What's the difference between certain DVDs?

[Jammrock]

Not all DVD's are made on the same press and using the same technique, and not all DVD players read the same. There have actually been several 'bugs' with DVD's and DVD players. Some copies of The Matrix won't play on older stand alone DVD units because of the DVD-ROM features on the disk.

Whether your Pioneer 10x is the problem or the disk itself (which is what it sounds like) I can't tell you. The easiest way to check is to put Time Cop into a few different DVD players and see if it works. If there are still picture troubles (and the disk is clean), you have a bad disk and should return it. If there are no troubles, you may have a problem between that disk and your drive.

Jammrock

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PIII 450@504, 256 MB RAM, 35 GB total w/ WD Experts, Abit UDMA 66 controller, CL 6x DVD, PLEXTOR 8x4x32 ATAPI CD-RW (my newest toy), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, LinkSys Etherfast 10/100, DSI 56k modem, Addtronics 6896A Case w/ a crap load of fans and Dynmat noise dampening, MAG DX715T monitor.

Hi, my name is Jammrock. I'm a computer phreak and an EverCrack addict.

[Sequel]

Hi there.

Thanks for the response.

I got another guy to try it on his DVD
drive (not too sure of the make) and it
works OK. It must be a problem with the
disk and the drive then. Is there anything
I can do to fix it, or am I stuck with it?


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AMD K6-3 450MHz
Chaintech 5AGM-2 MB
(VIA MVP3 chipset)
64MB RAM
G400 AGPx1 32MB
Pioneer 10x DVD
Panasonic 4x CD-W

[Buuri]

I don't own a DVD device myself, but from what I understand the quality of the movies vary a lot. That is because a short movie fits on the disk with better quality.
That leads to a question of whether this makes your Timecop jerky since you simply don't have fast enough CPU to handle the good quality dencoding on the fly..? Haven't there been such problems or am I wrong as usual

_
B

[Buuri]

Also you don't have that much memory on your system. Could that be a factor in this?

_
B

[Sam Bowie]

I have a Celeron450/G400/128MB/Toshiba SD-M1212.
The truth about different DVDs is:
DVD's with Dolby Digital plays very smooth. Best with DMA enabled.
DVD's with Dolby Surround plays quite smoothly only on PowerDVD and DMA disabled. The MatroxDVD can't snow the picture right and the subtitles are missing.
Maybe I should get a better CPU.

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Cel464/128/G400/SBLive!/6xDVD

[Jammrock]

Burri has a point Could be that the MPEG signal is very HQ so your machine is having trouble with it. That or the software decoder is not the best. You may want to try to update the DVD core for the player.

Jammrock

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PIII 450@504, 256 MB RAM, 35 GB total w/ WD Experts, Abit UDMA 66 controller, CL 6x DVD, PLEXTOR 8x4x32 ATAPI CD-RW (my newest toy), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, LinkSys Etherfast 10/100, DSI 56k modem, Addtronics 6896A Case w/ a crap load of fans and Dynmat noise dampening, MAG DX715T monitor.

Hi, my name is Jammrock. I'm a computer phreak and an EverCrack addict.

[Wombat]

Have you tried a 16-bit desktop?

[xortam]

Jammrock, You have it reversed. The higher quality MPEG-2 video is one that has not been compressed as much (thus requiring more storage). DVDs may be constantly changing how much of a scene is compressed and to what level. That is part of the art of developing a good looking DVD movie -- knowing where and how much to compress. The more compression in a scene, the more CPU cycles will be required to decode that video. Therefore, the higher quality video requires less CPU cycles to decode the stream.

[This message has been edited by xortam (edited 12 January 2000).]

[Sequel]

What's the difference between certain DVDs?

Hi.

Got a quick question that somebody could
possibly help me with. The setup I've got
works absolutely great with some DVDs (like
Matrix, Ghostbusters etc.) but on others
I'm getting judder, especially with TimeCop
where the film is unbearable to watch..
picture quality excellent but the judder
is too bad.

I'm using the Standard Matrox G400 cinemaster
DVD player. The same occurs on other DVD
players as well.

Anyone tell me what possible problems are?

Just for info, UDMA is enabled on my DVD
drive.

Thanks in advance

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AMD K6-3 450MHz
Chaintech 5AGM-2 MB
(VIA MVP3 chipset)
64MB RAM
G400 AGPx1 32MB
Pioneer 10x DVD
Panasonic 4x CD-W

[Sequel]

Hi there

Thanks for all the responses, very helpful.

I finally got it sorted, it was due to the
Audio playback settings set at 44KHz, setting
it to 22 it played like a dream, and
I can't really tell the difference anyway! ;-)

Presumably, this is due to the CPU having
to do a lot more audio decoding, oh well...
maybe a new CPU is in order sometime!

Thanks.

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AMD K6-3 450MHz
Chaintech 5AGM-2 MB
(VIA MVP3 chipset)
64MB RAM
G400 AGPx1 32MB
Pioneer 10x DVD
Panasonic 4x CD-W

[breezer]

When I have problems with dvds I copy the vob files to my c drive and play them from there.

(G200 + Encore 5x)

[Easty]

Something I have noticed using DVD movies. I have collected my own copies of 11 films, which all work faultless throughout. Although I rent quite a lot of movies from the local blockbuster store and these always seem to be riddled with stutters and audio lag. My initial thought was that these Disks have just been badly treated, And this made me wonder how this delicate media can replace VHS within the rental market. Maybe as suggested above some films could be stored at various compression ratio's or maybe even the production techniques could be at different standards. Whatever the facts I think after you have rented two films the disk you have just watched makes a good place to sit your mug of hot chocolate while you watch the second movie!

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Ath 650,G4MAX,MSI Mobo, Vortex 2, Maxtor 6880+, 128 (100)