DVD Playback probs

Lex_Diamonds

I decided the other day to ditch my annoying Hardware based DVD decoder (cable switching annoyance) in favour of a software based player. So I downloaded WinDVD 2000 which I was informed by various sites had very good picture quality.

Problem is, its actually naff, and I reckon its my 'puter. The sole problem is loads of square shaped artifacting which "pulses" on top of the picture, making it look rather horrible. Any ideas about this? Is it just Soft players in general? Your thoughts would be much appreciated. Thx in advance.

SPEC:

Pentuium 3 1ghz
128ram
i815 intel mobo
geforce 2 (6.47 drivers, directX 8. Fast writes and side band addressing enabled)
Win98 SE

Megatron

I've found that most DVD playback problems is to do with the resolution your running ...
now i've got me a Voodoo 3 and one i don't go to max resolution i'm fine, but if i want to get the best quaility playback i keep my res to about 800X600 ...

Hope this helps ....


Later Skater

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No !!!!! I will crush you with my Bare hands.
P.S. Avator fromerly know as Gamblor !!

Bard

I'd also recommend reducing the resolution if you're in a high res. Some graphical display glitches in DVD's are down to poor quality of the encoding on the discs themselves... but this is quite rare - more often than not you'll find that either the playback software or your graphics drivers are at fault and need to be updated. I'd say get the latest drivers for your graphics card and install them, then ditch WinDVD 2000 and go with Cyberlink PowerDVD 3. It's the business.

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Bard

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"We do know it was we who scorched the sky..."

strat

I cant fault PowerDVD 3, I was using 2.55 for ages before 3 came out and its a class package.
It even lets u take screen shots from the film ur watching.

Good stuff indeed.

WhiteWashMan

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by StrataGIST:
I cant fault PowerDVD 3, I was using 2.55 for ages before 3 came out and its a class package.
It even lets u take screen shots from the film ur watching.

Good stuff indeed.</font>

agreed, power dvd 3 is the mutts nutts, and you might also try turning down your refresh rate as well as your resolution

Gerry

Yeah, I reckon try powerdvd 3 as well, works perfectly for me. Great picture quality.

Lex_Diamonds

Thanks for the input lads but I reckon it was just me being paranoid. When I plug in the pass-through cable for my hardware dvd card, the picture gets noticeably muddy and this I feel hides alot of artifacting. I used a copy of Blade Runner to test and the same artifacting was evident both on WINDVD (software) and Creative Player (hardware). Just less noticeable with the pass through.

Thats my theory anyway. I guess i'll go and download PowerDVD 3 off the net.

Bard

Unfortunately the free version isn't much cop, only allowing you to watch a very short segment of a DVD movie before the sound cuts out and then only a little more before the video cuts out. You'll have to buy it (or do something "naughty") to get the proper version - but it's worth it.

I'm using version 2.55 at the moment, but as soon as I manage to lop a lump off my credit card bill, I'll buy version 3.0 - as far as I remember it's relatively inexpensive.

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Bard

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"We do know it was we who scorched the sky..."

Lex_Diamonds

Im afraid I was naughty bard. I downloaded it today . Just type in "powerdvd download" into ALtavista and bobs your Uncle for version 3.0

Stonemason

Anyone here running a p2 333mhz machine and if so are you useing a DVD to watch movies on it.The reason i ask is someone asked me today what he needed to run movies off his dvd player on this machine i reckoned he could probably run them but it would be so jerky as to be unwatchable.Am i wrong ? i was running a duron 800 with with 128mb of pc133 12x DVD drive and it was still very slightly jerky.

Stone

Gerry

A p2 333 is not really going to give perfect playback, but it won't be unwatchable. It depends on whether the graphics card is able to help out the cpu with the decoding work. For example, ati cards can do motion compensation, which speeds things up a fair bit. I'd use windvd, or cinemaster instead of powerdvd on such a machine, as its a bit faster. You can use a program called dvd genie to pick optimised settings for whichever decoder and graphics card you use.

It's puzzling as to why it is jerky on the duron 800. CPU usage varies between dvd drives, and decoders but try the following...
Make sure dma is enabled on the dvd drive, get the latest via 4-in-1 drivers. Make sure that none of the ide controllers are using standard microsoft drivers. It should be grand then. I got dvd's to run perfectly on my p3 450, so a duron 800 should be well able for it.

[This message has been edited by Gerry (edited 14-05-2001).]

Stephen

Stone - You should try that P2 333 with a hardware decoder card. My friend Lump (yes the one from these boards ) has a Celeron 333 with 64mb ram and a Creative DXR3 decoder card and he gets great DVD playback (his graphics card is a 16mb AGP TNT if that makes any difference).

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- Munch

Gerry

well yeah, I was talking purely about getting it working on the cheap, without splashing out on a card. I have gotten a dxr3 card working perfectly on a p166mmx, it just depends on whether the pc can read from the dvd drive fast enough.

Stonemason

Cheers lads its just been so i got rid of my 333 about 3 years ago hehehe and could honestly tell the fella that it would run ok without a card.Know matter as for the duron being jerky it not that bad its so slight im more inclind to think it more the software dvd player its winDVD 2000 im useing it came with the drive .


Stone