manono
15th November 2004, 23:40
Hi-
I have a Bravo D1 DVD/MPEG-4 player with the first generation Sigma Designs chipset. Like everyone else, I'd been having problems with temporary stuttering and freezing when the action got hot and heavy. I'm not talking about stuttering from other causes. For example, mine stutters with AC3 muxed with VDubMod default settings, but when muxed with NanDub's 96/96, it plays fine. No, I'm talking about stutters caused by temporary bitrate spikes. I'd always figured it was caused by not having enough Flash Memory to buffer the video (or something like that), and that it was something we "cutting edge" users had to put up with until these units evolved and advanced some more.
Well, a while back the loader (DVD-ROM) gave out. It started making these screeching noises, and the AVIs stuttered and froze all the time. I changed it out with an old Artec 16x DVD-ROM I had removed from a computer because it didn't rip DVDs to the hard drive fast enough. It was pretty easy to do. I opened the standalone, disconnected the stuff, put the new one in and reconnected the stuff, and closed it up. I burn my movies to CD-R, by the way.
Then I went back to watching movies again, but without doing any real testing. After awhile I noticed that nothing was causing it to stutter and freeze anymore. Nothing. Everything I threw at it played smoothly. Martial arts movies with heavy fighting, explosions, crowd scenes, even just a close-up of leaves blowing on a tree, the complex scenes that can cause the freezes; none of them caused it to freeze and stutter anymore. Pretty cool, I thought. So last night I decided to give it my torture test, not expecting anything good to come of it.
Once when ripping a DVD to AVI, I decided that the movie needed more than 1 CD, but didn't need 2 CDs. The DVD has as an extra a 9 minute French cartoon from the 1930's, and I decided to include it on the second CD. It's unrestored, very noisy, grainy, and scratched up, a real bitrate hog. This 9 minute cartoon is at 512x384, consumes 470 MB of space, has a video bitrate of 7236 kb/s, and another 76 of mono MP3 audio. This is according to GSpot. With the original loader it would stop a few frames into the video while the audio kept playing. A couple of minutes later it would update to another frame and then completely freeze again. And so on. I put it on, expecting the same thing to occur with this loader, but much to my surprise, it played all the way through, smooth as silk. Again, this is from CD-R, and not DVD-R. So, if any of you have any DVD-ROMs lying around, you might give it a try.
Problems installing the new loader:
The new one wasn't the same size as the original one, and didn't lock down using the original screw holes. I made a shim from a thin piece of wood to raise it to the same height as the previous loader. To keep it in place I used some Velcro "dots" with glue on the back that I got at Wal-Mart. Works great.
I wanted the black face-plate from the original loader to keep the nice black front of the standalone, as the replacement was beige. I managed to break off one of the little side pieces, but some super glue fixed that. Other than that, the installation was a breeze; just like changing any optical drive of a computer.
Problems after installation:
Some slight noise sometimes from the faster DVD-ROM. Kind of a "whirring" noise that we're all familiar with from our computers. A minor inconvenience.
Before, when I paused the player, like to take a phone call or something, when I came back, it would play for a second or so, pause briefly, and then resume. Now, when I pause it for more than about 30 seconds, it plays for a second, stops, and kicks me back to the on-screen menu. I know about that now, note how far into the movie I am, and restart it at the same place. A very small price to pay for not having movies freeze and stutter on me any more.
If any of you have any old DVD-ROMs lying around, and are annoyed with the stuttering and freezing, you might try out this solution. At the worst, you may lose an hour out of your life. And at the best, you may be able to enjoy your movies in peace, without worrying about freezing when Jackie Chan starts to kick some butt. If some people report back here with successful "upgrades", then some more of you might consider investing 30 or 40 dollars (or Euros, or whatever) to buy a new DVD-ROM. I've read that the Lite-Ons also do a good job, but I don't really think it makes much difference what you use. And I take no responsibility at all for anyone that manages to break their standalone, or their loader, or anything else, when attempting this. I'm just reporting what worked for me with my particular DVD/MPEG-4 player with my chipset. Good luck.
I have a Bravo D1 DVD/MPEG-4 player with the first generation Sigma Designs chipset. Like everyone else, I'd been having problems with temporary stuttering and freezing when the action got hot and heavy. I'm not talking about stuttering from other causes. For example, mine stutters with AC3 muxed with VDubMod default settings, but when muxed with NanDub's 96/96, it plays fine. No, I'm talking about stutters caused by temporary bitrate spikes. I'd always figured it was caused by not having enough Flash Memory to buffer the video (or something like that), and that it was something we "cutting edge" users had to put up with until these units evolved and advanced some more.
Well, a while back the loader (DVD-ROM) gave out. It started making these screeching noises, and the AVIs stuttered and froze all the time. I changed it out with an old Artec 16x DVD-ROM I had removed from a computer because it didn't rip DVDs to the hard drive fast enough. It was pretty easy to do. I opened the standalone, disconnected the stuff, put the new one in and reconnected the stuff, and closed it up. I burn my movies to CD-R, by the way.
Then I went back to watching movies again, but without doing any real testing. After awhile I noticed that nothing was causing it to stutter and freeze anymore. Nothing. Everything I threw at it played smoothly. Martial arts movies with heavy fighting, explosions, crowd scenes, even just a close-up of leaves blowing on a tree, the complex scenes that can cause the freezes; none of them caused it to freeze and stutter anymore. Pretty cool, I thought. So last night I decided to give it my torture test, not expecting anything good to come of it.
Once when ripping a DVD to AVI, I decided that the movie needed more than 1 CD, but didn't need 2 CDs. The DVD has as an extra a 9 minute French cartoon from the 1930's, and I decided to include it on the second CD. It's unrestored, very noisy, grainy, and scratched up, a real bitrate hog. This 9 minute cartoon is at 512x384, consumes 470 MB of space, has a video bitrate of 7236 kb/s, and another 76 of mono MP3 audio. This is according to GSpot. With the original loader it would stop a few frames into the video while the audio kept playing. A couple of minutes later it would update to another frame and then completely freeze again. And so on. I put it on, expecting the same thing to occur with this loader, but much to my surprise, it played all the way through, smooth as silk. Again, this is from CD-R, and not DVD-R. So, if any of you have any DVD-ROMs lying around, you might give it a try.
Problems installing the new loader:
The new one wasn't the same size as the original one, and didn't lock down using the original screw holes. I made a shim from a thin piece of wood to raise it to the same height as the previous loader. To keep it in place I used some Velcro "dots" with glue on the back that I got at Wal-Mart. Works great.
I wanted the black face-plate from the original loader to keep the nice black front of the standalone, as the replacement was beige. I managed to break off one of the little side pieces, but some super glue fixed that. Other than that, the installation was a breeze; just like changing any optical drive of a computer.
Problems after installation:
Some slight noise sometimes from the faster DVD-ROM. Kind of a "whirring" noise that we're all familiar with from our computers. A minor inconvenience.
Before, when I paused the player, like to take a phone call or something, when I came back, it would play for a second or so, pause briefly, and then resume. Now, when I pause it for more than about 30 seconds, it plays for a second, stops, and kicks me back to the on-screen menu. I know about that now, note how far into the movie I am, and restart it at the same place. A very small price to pay for not having movies freeze and stutter on me any more.
If any of you have any old DVD-ROMs lying around, and are annoyed with the stuttering and freezing, you might try out this solution. At the worst, you may lose an hour out of your life. And at the best, you may be able to enjoy your movies in peace, without worrying about freezing when Jackie Chan starts to kick some butt. If some people report back here with successful "upgrades", then some more of you might consider investing 30 or 40 dollars (or Euros, or whatever) to buy a new DVD-ROM. I've read that the Lite-Ons also do a good job, but I don't really think it makes much difference what you use. And I take no responsibility at all for anyone that manages to break their standalone, or their loader, or anything else, when attempting this. I'm just reporting what worked for me with my particular DVD/MPEG-4 player with my chipset. Good luck.