DVD Video Playback is Jerky

[James]

Yes, I ran out to my neighborhood Future Shop and bought The Matrix yesterday. I put my G400 on Dual Display DVDMax, put the DVD in my drive, and whamo! I get propper looking video output to my monitor but some jerky stuff coming out of my Sony TV. How disappointing!

The Dual Display Clone feature seems to work fine on my TV with games, applications, and those video clips from the Win 98 SE CD. I appear to get this jerky playback only with DVD.

Looking at the everhelpful owner's manual, I did verify that DMA was selected for my Pioneer DVD4 6x drive, which should have more than adequate speed.

I have tried both the original 5.15? drivers from the Matrox CD as well as the 5.25 drivers.


To characterise the symptoms a bit more, here's Part 1...

When I start DVD playback, the video quality on the TV starts to fade in and out. As the quality fades out, the colours and the screen darkens and then I get this jerky crap similar to when the tracking is off with a VCR. As the screen fades back in, the colours lighten up and the screen stabilizes to something resembling normal output. For those brief moments, the DVD playback looks great. Unfortunately, I'm not interested in watching my DVDs in 5 sec intervals while skipping out 5-10 sec intervals.

Anyway, the problem continues even after I stop DVD playback and plagues me when I go back to using applications or games that previously worked fine in Dual Display. The only way to remove the jerky playback is to reboot, after which applications and games look fine again on the TV.

Part 2 of the above problem...

As those of you know who have tried The Matrix DVD, there's an interactive portion that lets you play certain scenes, such as the Kung Fu fights. I tried playing these scenes through the interactive program, but things crap out even worse.

On top of the problem with Part 1 and the jerky video playback, I now get these horizontal lines across BOTH the TV and the monitor.


What's up? Ideas anyone?


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Windows 98 SE
AOpen AX6BC Pro Gold
Celeron 366 PPGA (I've ran this at both 366 and 550, but no diff)
MSI-6905 Dual Slocket Adapter
64MB PC100
Creative Labs SB Live! Value
Matrox G400 32 MB AGP Dual
Pioneer DVD4 6X CD-Rom 32X

[SteveC]

Aha! Problem 1 is easy - Welcome to the world of Macrovision. What you are seeing is copy proction crap put in to stop you, um, copying. Plug the output from the g400 directly into your TV and you will be fine. If, like me, you can't do that, cand HAVE to go through your VCR, hard luck. There's nothing you can do, apart from buy a SCART -> aerial (uhf) converter. Or a box which removes the Macrovision encoding.

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Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)




[This message has been edited by SteveC (edited 09-22-1999).]

[James]

This board is great! Put up a question and get a response almost instantly.

Ya, SteveC.

As you guessed, I do have the composite output from the G400 going to my VCR. My damned Sony TV doesn't take composite or S-Video. Oh well, looks like I'll have to upgrade my TV too thanks to Macrovision.

And gee, who would do such an illegal thing like copying a DVD?

Thanks for the info.

[SteveC]

Hey James, if your TV has a SCART in, get a composite -> SCART converter.

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)

[James]

Well SteveC,

My TV doesn't take SCART either. However, I did manage to get hold of a TV that takes composite over my lunch break and went home and tried it out. It took care of Part 1, jerky screen, alright.

However, I ran those Kung Fu clips again from the interactive program and I still get those damned horizontal lines on both the monitor and TV.

I don'y suppose you have any ideas on that do you?

Thanks.

[PurpleHaze]

I coulda sworn I downloaded something but didn't try it that was supposed to remove Macrovision in PD 5.x ... It isn't really 'encoding', it just plays on a shortcoming of the Cheapniss (thanks, Frank) of most VCRs. It's basically there to make sure that only real pirates get away with copying. The recording industry wants to make sure that only large-production piracy facilities succeed; As long as they can nip the problem of Marge lending Joe a copy of Black Belt Jones, well, the industry is safe from us subversives.