Poor Playback Problem

[RFeaster]

The problem is that in certain parts of the movie, the video lags (skips) and then later speeds up to catch up with the audio. During this time, the light on the DVD drive is constantly lit. Using waveout instead of directsound helps, but the problem persists. The file plays fine from the hard drive. Here's the particulars:

-Divx 5.0.2 (GMC only) with AC-3 6 channel Audio 448kbs
-Movies range from 2.5GB ~ 4.0GB in size
-Ritek 1.0 DVD Blanks
-Burned with Nero 5.5.8.0
-WinME & Win2K SP3 (both w/ DirectX 8.1b)
-P3 933,32MB video, 256MB SDRAM
-Soundblaster Live! 5.1, decoding AC-3
-Iviaudio.ax 3.0.55.0 using SPDIF out
-SmartRipper,DVD2DVI,VFAPI,VirtualDub,NanDub(for muxing) method.
-Interleaving 128/128ms

That's about all I can think of. I thought it may be the DVD blank quality, but I'm not so sure. I can take a portion of the movie & burn it to a good quality CD & it does the same thing.

Does anyone one have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Ron

[davepyne]

try burning with "VOB instant CD/DVD 6.5"
i noticed better quality burns. with nero my DVD's skip on my crappy stand-alone, but on "VOB instant CD/DVD 6.5" they work fine.
just remember to use the same settings as nero when burning:
data disc (UDF)
make sure it is set to DVD 4.7 (not CDRW or anything)
uncheck Joliet
check UDF 1.02
everything else default. should work.

lemme know how it turns out
-Dave

[RFeaster]

Thanks for the reply, Dave. I'll try it tonight & let you know.

Thanks,
Ron

[RFeaster]

Well, that didn't work. Even tried Gear Pro. Just as a test, I burned the *.avi clip without audio...problem still exists, but not as bad. Even started from scratch & re-encoded the video...same problem. Even went back to Divx 4.12...same problem. I'm out of ideas for the moment.

Thanks for the help though. It sounded like a logical idea.

Ron

[gooki]

is you rom drive set to pio or dma mode?

[RFeaster]

I have a Toshiba SD-M1502 & a Pioneer DVR-104. Both are set to DMA in WinME, but I can't find where to turn it on in Win2K. By the way, playback is better in ME than 2K. Maybe its because of the DMA thing.

Thanks,
Ron

[davepyne]

I just did this for myself. You need to have the latest service pack from windows update installed first. Then right click "my computer"-"properties"-"hardware"-"device manager"-"IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
Make sure your primary (usually your hard drives) and secondary (usually CD-rom/dvd) are set to "DMA if available" and the current transfer mode is DMA or Ultra DMA (UDMA). This won't work if you don't have the latest win2000 service pack installed which is found on <www.windowsudate.com>

hope this helps. it worked for me
Dave

[RFeaster]

Thanks for the help on help with the DMA stuff. I turned on DMA for the 2 drives, but guess what?.....still "skipping". It helped a little though. The clip now "skips" equally in both WinME & Win2K.

Again, I'm still not sure where to go from here......IfoEdit/CCE??

Thanks,
Ron

[RFeaster]

UPDATE:

I never solved the skipping problem. I gave up on Divx & tried using CCE and authoring with IfoEdit. Made 2 movies and had great success. Personally, I think this is the way to go; at least for me.

Thanks,
Ron

[klona]

For me it seems to be a performance issue in reading from your drives.
Are your DVD devide as Slaves on your IDE ?

Is your motherboard supporting latest disk technologies ?

To verify that, did you test your DVD in another PC ?

I have several divx/AC3 on CD and DVD and get no error with A03 and XP, and I don't even know if I have DMA enable ! Never checked ! (Disk are on separated raid controler)