How do (don't) DVDs work?

[Soapy Sam]

Just tried to watch a DVD on my laptop, using PowerDVD.
As the movie progressed, the frame rate slowed. It started to freeze. The freeze periods lasted longer and longer. At about 2/3 (say 1hour) in, it stopped totally.

Restarting at a later point in the DVD, the process repeated.

As it happens, I rarely watch DVDs. This is attempt 3 since I got the laptop last year. 2 of the 3 have done this. All legal, new DVDs. The version of PowerDVD was preinstalled when I got the laptop.

Any idea why it would do this? It seems to me that something is progressively taking up more and more memory or processor cycles until the whole system stops.
This may be total nonsense.

Comments?

[a_unique_person]

Sounds like it could be a memory leak in the DVD playing software. If I was you, I'd check the PowerDVD Web site for an update for the software.

[Soapy Sam]

Eek! So that explains the stuff oozing out of the drive. Leaking memory. That's nasty.

Thanks. I'll try that.

[Smike]

The only similar problem I have had to this was due to the very slow read speed of the DVD drive (2x). Basically, if the DVD had any scratches, or was a bit dirty, the drive couldn't read fast enough to make up for the re-reading of dodgy bits.

In a fairly new laptop I wouldn't expect this to be a problem, but check just in case.

[Patricio Elicer]

I use PowerDVD in my comp. I had similar problems, though not that serious as the screen freezing totally.

Go to "Configuration", then "Video". Try checking (or unchecking) the "Hardware Acceleration" box. In my version it was unchecked by default, checking it solved my problem to an acceptable extent.

[clusterm2]

Can't you watch your DVDs using Windows Media Player?

[a_unique_person]

IIRC, anti trust laws made it so that Media Player was hobbled, or something. Perhaps it's just not bundled. It works fine, but if you read slashdot, installing means Bill Gates has a contract for your soul signed in blood.

[Stimpson J. Cat]

In principle, there is nothing to prevent media player, or any other direct-show player, from playing DVDs.

You just need an mpeg2 codec, and something to deal with decryption.

Commercial DVD software, such as PowerDVD, provides both. I don't think that Windows XP comes with an mpeg2 codec built in, but you can get them easily enough. I use a program called media player classic, which has a built in codec for mpeg2, and can play DVDs.

The big issue is encryption. Companies like PowerDVD and WinDVD have to pay a license fee to the MPAA to be able to decrypt encrypted DVDs. For non-encrypted DVDs, all you need is a player which supports handling DVD menus (like media player classic), and an mpeg2 codec.

There are separate programs, such as AnyDVD, which can break the encryption.

Also, if you have the full version of NERO, it includes a movie player with DVD and mpeg2 support. But again you need to bypass the encryption.


Dr. Stupid

[moopet]

If you want to try another player with no fussy codec downloads, just get VLC (http://videolan.org).
Or try a trial of windvd. Or any of a million different things.

To diagnose a memory leak:
When it's going slow in powerDVD, get up a task manager and see how much memory is being used (control-shift-escape, then choose the "performance" tab)
Then kill powerdvd and restart it and compare the before, without and after memory usage. Use your noggin, if it looks like the memory usage is sensible for your machine then it probably isn't powerdvd that's the problem.

[Soapy Sam]

Thanks for the responses. I'll try what I can from them.
However...I tried the same DVD later and it ran without a hitch!

Major difference being I ran it in a user account rather than the administrator account.

I'don't know why that would make such a difference, but it seems to.


The laptop has both PowerDVD and Windows Media Player 9 preinstalled, by the way. Both can play DVDs. The same faults happen in both, though PowerDVD generally takes longer to lock up.

512MB RAM , (of which 64 is grabbed for video). XP Home. It's an Averatec 3000 series. AMDm 1.7

Nice wee machine actually, though the advertised battery life is optimistic to say the least.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam


Nice wee machine actually, though the advertised battery life is optimistic to say the least.

I have heard they use the same guy who tests phone battery life to test laptop battery life. He seems to do an excellent trade, for some reason.

[Gestahl]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam
Thanks for the responses. I'll try what I can from them.
However...I tried the same DVD later and it ran without a hitch!

Major difference being I ran it in a user account rather than the administrator account.

I'don't know why that would make such a difference, but it seems to.


Question, is your hard drive going crazy when it slows down? If so, you got a memory leak (your harddrive acts as memory when your RAM is exhausted). Once the harddrive and the DVD player are both trying to transfer data (they are on the same wire, essentially), bad things happen.