PC-DVD stalling

The_Bullman

Does anyone know why my dvd, keeps skipping and stalling after an hour of playing.

It usually happens after this time and then periodically until the end of the movie. Like today i was watching die hard and it stalled 6-10 times. The last one i had time to go for a piss before it righted itself.

I am using the creative encore 12x kit(12x drive+dxr3 card) and outputting to my 32" widescreen tv. There is a 1.2 gig chip and a gig of ram in there.

is there any way to prevent it doing this during playback as it really can spoil a movie.

Lex_Diamonds

Anything running in the background?

Could be a dodgy/old drive.

Computer on a totally flat surface?

Latest drivers+player for Creative stuff?

Has it always happened or is it a recent thing?

Maybe overheating in some component?

The_Bullman

Anything running in the background?

nope, shouldn't really matter with my system though. should it?

Could be a dodgy/old drive.

dunno if it is dodgy, not too old. 6-9 months

Computer on a totally flat surface?

yes, if you are wondering about it being stable or not, let me say it is. My computer rack is huge, my own design and it is not being shaken/bumped into during playback.

Latest drivers+player for Creative stuff

I do, though the creative drivers are not updated much as they have abandonded the hardware dvd decoding

Has it always happened or is it a recent thing?

don't think that it used to happen that much but I only started watching dvd's on my tv in the last 2 months and then it seems to happen with almost every movie at least once

Maybe overheating in some component?

I hope not. I have the standard chip sink+fan and another 3 extra in the case. It is possible that the dxr3 card is overheating, but i don't think it is. In this respect whould it be of benifit to open the case as i have ran it with the case open and closed and there is feck all difference.


thanks for the reply lex

Lex_Diamonds

Maybe you could try blowing a fan through the case.

Maybe you should move to software decoding, see if it skips in that.

_CreeD_

I'd be inclined to look at the drive itself. As the movie plays not only is heat a factor but the lens is moving further out on the disk itself. If there is any instability in the transport or a problem with error correction it is more likely to be an issue here (The disk will be wobbling more at the edges).
One way to check would be to rip the DVD to your HDD and then run it from there. If all is fine then you know the drive is the culprit.

Saruman

the 12X still uses the DXR3 right? there was an issue a while back where the end of certain movies stopped and would not play... there is an update on the creative site for it!

Mailman

If you are using a DXR3 then use the latest Creative Badged sigma designs apps and drivers on Creative's web site or else use Sigma designs drivers and apps from their web site. Various forums will tell you how to get the latter working with a DXR3.

use a soft DVD decoder to see if it is the DXR3 or not.

If it starts stuttering half way through a movie then your DVD-ROM drive has problems negotiating the layer transition on Dual Layer discs(DVD 9).

As DVD use the UDF file system try loading a UDF reader to see if that helps or disable the native UDF reader in w. 98 from msconfig if that is your OS.
Earlier readme.txt file for Encore used to mention UDF files so look at this.

Look for an updated firmware for the DVD drive - you might have to mail tech support to get an updated firmware or look to various forums on the web to find a later firmware from the company that manufactured the particular model of drive you bought from Creative.

Do try to get a loan of another DVD drive as there is a very good chance that your drive is faulty.

Long term, use Sigma Designs drivers as Creative don't plan to support this product further and it will gradually become less and less compatible with the latest DVD titles on the market.

The DXR3 card isn't all that bad and I've owned more than one of them in the past, some of the 12X Creative drives aren't very good reliability wise tough.

Benchmark the drive using the DVDSPEED utility which was on www.come.to/cdspeed last time I looked just to see how it's behaving. Your not interested in the actual benchmarks just the graphs it produces when benchmarking a DVD-9 disc. You should see nice curves, no jaggies, no flatlines.

amp

Not sure if it's applicable but you might make sure that the IDE controller the DVD drive is connected to is using Ultra DMA. In Win98 it's in the properties of the drive in Device manager. In w2k it's the properties of the controller. If they are on autodetect (in w2k) and still are stuck on PIO mode then check the settings in your BIOS.