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DVD Movies Skipping on PC-DVD drive??

T

The Wildcard

Platinum Member
Hello, certain movies seem to skip really bad on my CREATIVE LABS PC-ENCORE DVD 8X DRIVE with DXR3 decoder card. I got a Celeron 566mhz with 128 Megs of ram. Sometimes it gets so bad that it just pauses completely, then moves a bit, then pauses again and then moves. I dunno what would cause it.
 
ChrisOh brings up a good point that I don't know the answer to.

Is DMA supposed to be enabled for dvd drives? The matrox dvd player installer gives a warning if the drive is not dma enabled, but why?

Wildcard, what os? Ive found that software decoders often work better in win2k than the hardware cards just because of crappy drivers.
 
DMA MUST be enabled on DVD drives to get non-jerky playback. That's why you get the warning from your player if it is not enabled.
 
I would be interested if anyone can help me too. I have a similar problem.

I have the Encore DVD 8x w/ DXR3 Decoder Board and it seems frames are dropped at times. Also, in the Matrix, I can't play an entire chapter.

It seems to skip and jump every once and awhile though. Also, why does it take so long for discs to eject sometimes? Its more rare, but I press the eject button and sometimes have to wait like 30 sec before it ejects the CD/DVD.

I have a good system too, ASUS A7V, Tbird 900, Creative Labs GeForce2, etc. I have DMA enabled on the DVD and it is plugged into the regular ports on the motherboard(not the Promise 100).

Anyone else have a similar setup? Could it be video drivers(using latest FastTrax). I'm also using the latest DVD software and driver from Creative. What else could it be? Should I try plugging it into the Promise Controller? Would that work? I had a Promise/33 Controller card for my 400 Mhz machine and when I plugged a regular CD drive into it, it didn't like it so much so thats why I kept the DVD on the regular DMA/66 or 33 whatever the other ports are on the A7V. Anything else that could be causing this?

I forgot to mention I also have an SB Live! X-Gamer. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
Hmm i have DMA enabled as well. I have a creative labs tnt2 ultra using 5.22 nvidia drivers. I have an abit bx6 rev2. I also do have a sb live x-gamer.
 
This isn't much of a solution, but it might help you isolate the problem. I would suggest that you uninstall your decoder board, and download a software player such as PowerDVD and see if it doesn't work better. Also, anyone with a procesor faster than 450mhz should get better image quality out of a software player, so you might just find that your better off with a software decoder anyway.
 
I second what comp10 said. From what I've seen, the new ati radeon cards are the only good hardware based dvd solutions.
 
As you'll notice by my sig I am running a Radeon, but I had a geforce2 MX that handled DVD just fine IMO. I still prefer ATI 100%

Make sure you have the latest directx and check for a dvd drive FIRMWARE update. Just to confirm it, if necessary, yes DMA is CRUCIAL to proper playback. IRQ issues might also play a role in some systems. A defragged HD helps DVD decompression (DMA active on the HD? It better be). Low memory and low virtual memory settings might be a ah heck too.

I have set up DVD on many systems. A corrupt directx and lack of DMA are my most common issues when diagnosing someone elses setup. Check dxdiag and see if everything is kosher. Reinstall if not.

The best DVD player I have experienced is Win DVD. It has performed flawless for me where many others have failed.


Midnight, I doubt the ATA100 channel will solve your problem. I think that crappy decoder card is the problem. You have a fast enough system for software decoding. If I were you I'd try running it without it and see.
 
Hmm i am using Creative's Dxr3 decoder board. WEll the defragged hard drive might be the culprit because now that i think of it, my dvd's have only skipped twice, and that's recently, after watch 2 different movies. And i just remembered that i didn't defrag my hdd before watching the first. So to make a long story short, i didn't defrag my hdd for 2 weeks.

 
On another note, my roomate uses a software decoding on his TOSHIBA 12X dvd player in a Gateway AMD Athlon 733mhz system and it is constantly choppy. Strange thing is it didn't happen before but just like last week. He's defragged and it is still doing it. He's using Gateway's software dvd player. I think i am gonna suggest PowerDVD for him too.
 
powerdvd is not free.

there is no free player i know of.

i played DVDs fine on my c466, and now my c800. software decoding too, and rage128 idct, but since i hate ati's player, it's software decoding.
 
PowerDVD and WinDVD (among others) are not free, but you can usually download a trial/shareware version which will allow you to test and see if the software will work with your system...
 
This is an update to my situation and i think i might have figured out why it is skipping. I rememberd i had a similar program of the computer temporarily freezing when my network card was sharing the same irq with the video card. So i moved the network card and NOW it is sharing the same IRQ with the DXR3 decoder card!! So maybe everyone who is having this problem should move around their decoder card away from pheripals such as network cards or video cards
 
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