VLC Media Player BSODs Playing VOB Files

BassPig · 3rd November 2008, 18:19

We author quite a few DVDs each month, and frequently we check some of the VOBs in VLC Media Player. A recently-updated 0.9.2 version was in use when we experienced some problems with a particular DVD title we created the image of last week.

VLC will crash Win XP with a BSOD error "IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" when playing CERTAIN VOBs, but not the smaller ones in the affected project.

Adding further to the strangeness of this, when the DVD image is burned to a DVD-R with Nero 8 and verify is ON, the disc burns okay, but fails the verify stage. However, the disc plays perfectly, all the way through, on every set top player we had available for quality control checking.

Something is very strange about the VOB files in this particular project. For background context, the source video is XDCam. It was a multi-camera shoot that was edited in Premiere Pro CS3. Video was encoded with Adobe Media Encoder. DVD was authored in Scenarist. This is a workflow that we've been using for over a year with no issues of significance prior to this.

I am wondering what can be causing only CERTAIN VOBs to crash VLC Media Player and the OS in this critical manner?

Also, how could Nero indicate a failure of disc verification, yet the disc plays flawlessly?

What is it about these VOB files that could cause Nero to fail disc verification? I thought data was data, even corrupt data, as long as the data written to DVD is the same as the source, it should pass verfication, should it not?

At this point, we're concerned about the current title being near the end of production and the integrity of the master image, only because of the computer errors. Would re-muxing the Scenarist project do any good? Why would VLC crash like that when playing the main program VOBs and not when playing the extras an menu VOBs?

Maybe someone can shed some light on this peculiar mystery?

Reimar · 3rd November 2008, 19:11

Since a BSOD is an OS-level bug there is something seriously wrong and it has nothing to do with the vob, VLC player or any user-level application.
Now that leaves quite a bit of stuff and your guess is as good as mine, but have your tried it on a different PC?
If you can't I would try running some memory checking tool to make sure the RAM is ok and also disabling virus scanners.

avivahl · 3rd November 2008, 19:13

You might wanna run a memory check.

Leak · 3rd November 2008, 19:14

If VLC manages to BSOD your XP something else must be assisting it.

Either you've got a bad audio or video driver installed, or your RAM, CPU or mainboard might be on it's way out. (Don't laugh, I just had that with freshly bought RAM...)

Anyway, I'd recommend running a torture test with Prime95 (that beta supports multiple cores out of the box) for a few minutes (mine would error out after several seconds) and a few passes of MemTest86+ just to be sure...

Bad RAM might also explain the verification error.

np: Vladislav Delay - Pietola (Multila)

BassPig · 4th November 2008, 08:05

I just finished a battery of tests, including Prime95 doing memory-intensive testing and the system passed every test set.

I should emphasize that VLC doesn't BSOD with every VOB file I play--those from earlier projects are fine. It's just the VOBs from this latest project that are crashing the system. The fact that only these VOBs cause the BSODs and that only these VOBs fail the data verification in Nero, draws suspicion to them. However, I have no other means of testing the files to see what it is about them that makes them have this peculiar trait of crashing the VLC player. When burned to DVD, they don't do anything peculiar.

As a side note, I need to mention that I experienced a number of BSODs two weeks ago when attempting to burn a DVD while Adobe Premiere CS3 was rendering an MPEG file. Each time this occured, the BSOD said that "a critical system process has stopped responding.." That rather disturbed me, but then, I'd never burned a DVD in the background while rendering MPEG files before, so I don't know if it's just an inability of XP to handle multitasking of resources, or a problem specific to this system.

SYSTEM CONFIG:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6
XFX PVT80GTHF9 GeForce 8800GTS 640MB
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Mushkin Hp2-6400 Ddr2 4gb Kit
Western Digital Caviar HD 500G|WD 7K 16M SATA2 WD5000AAKS
SILVERSTONE TEMJIN SST-TJ06S-W Silver Aluminum
Seasonic S12 Energy Plus SS- 650HT Power Supply
LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray burner
HP LP3065 30" LCD Display
Turtle Beach Montego DDL 7.1 Dolby Digital
Pioneer DVR-112D
ZALMAN 9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
Contour Shuttle-Pro

ADDITIONAL INFO:

After the BSOD from playing ANY VOB file of 1GB or larger, upon reboot, VLC won't run anymore. "VLC Media Player has encountered a problem and needs to close" is all the program will generate. I uninstalled and reinstalled it and it works fine until I attempt to play the large VOB files again. At which time I get the BSOD in cmudaX3.sys. After rebooting, VLC media player is damaged and needs reinstall.

I thought that a Maxtor OneTouch drive that I had installed in the past month might be the problem, as the system problems seemed to start around that time, but having disconnected it solved nothing.

I suppose I can try replacing all the system drivers for each peripheral one by one.

We did have a lengthy power outage from a storm two weeks ago and it exceeded the run time of the APC 3000 UPS, so the system did get powered down while Windows was loaded, but it is rare that Windows gets damaged unless there is disc activity, but on an idle system overnight, I doubt that would be the case.

UPDATE 2:

I just uninstalled and reinstalled the Turtle Beach Montego DDL drivers (cmudaX3.sys) and retested and the problem persists, so it's not a corrupt cmudaX3.sys driver file and I have the most recent driver installed.

What's really annoying is that every time the system BSODs with VLC player, I have to uninstall and reinstall VLC to get it working again, otherwise it just generates an error report.

Short term solution for now is to disassociate .VOB extentions with VLC Media Player.

avih · 5th November 2008, 17:32

Give it a try on another system, just to see if it's a system issue or or a VLC issue (regardless of the correctness of the VOB files, VLC shoudn't BSOD) or some driver issue (try to update all MOBO/Display/Sound drivers to the latest). Also, try it with mplayer (MPUI/SMPlayer) and see if the log contains any interesting info, both on the original system and on a different system.

avih · 5th November 2008, 19:10

Also, VLC 0.92 is the 1st release of the new branch and it had many bugs. Latest VLC is 0.95, with many bug and crash fixes. For windows it's 0.94. Give it a go too, and check the log messages (Tools -> Messages).

BassPig · 12th November 2008, 08:47

I just upgraded to the .94 version this evening and now I can play all of those clips without a crash. I think the .92 version was choking on Dolby Surround audio tracks.

Klaus_1250 · 15th November 2008, 17:28

The 0.9.x VLC series aren't stable on Windows (yet). 0.9.2 was particularly bad, the more recent 0.9.6 seems to have improved but I doubt is it up-to-par with other players in term of stability.

RNiK · 19th November 2008, 16:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Klaus_1250

The 0.9.x VLC series aren't stable on Windows (yet). 0.9.2 was particularly bad, the more recent 0.9.6 seems to have improved but I doubt is it up-to-par with other players in term of stability.

Confirmed!

Ad example 0.9.6 always crash trying to play .FLV files on Windows.

3rd November 2008, 18:19	#1 \| Link
BassPig Registered User Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 302	VLC Media Player BSODs Playing VOB Files We author quite a few DVDs each month, and frequently we check some of the VOBs in VLC Media Player. A recently-updated 0.9.2 version was in use when we experienced some problems with a particular DVD title we created the image of last week. VLC will crash Win XP with a BSOD error "IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" when playing CERTAIN VOBs, but not the smaller ones in the affected project. Adding further to the strangeness of this, when the DVD image is burned to a DVD-R with Nero 8 and verify is ON, the disc burns okay, but fails the verify stage. However, the disc plays perfectly, all the way through, on every set top player we had available for quality control checking. Something is very strange about the VOB files in this particular project. For background context, the source video is XDCam. It was a multi-camera shoot that was edited in Premiere Pro CS3. Video was encoded with Adobe Media Encoder. DVD was authored in Scenarist. This is a workflow that we've been using for over a year with no issues of significance prior to this. I am wondering what can be causing only CERTAIN VOBs to crash VLC Media Player and the OS in this critical manner? Also, how could Nero indicate a failure of disc verification, yet the disc plays flawlessly? What is it about these VOB files that could cause Nero to fail disc verification? I thought data was data, even corrupt data, as long as the data written to DVD is the same as the source, it should pass verfication, should it not? At this point, we're concerned about the current title being near the end of production and the integrity of the master image, only because of the computer errors. Would re-muxing the Scenarist project do any good? Why would VLC crash like that when playing the main program VOBs and not when playing the extras an menu VOBs? Maybe someone can shed some light on this peculiar mystery? __________________ Take care, Mark & Mary Ann Weiss www.mwhdvideo.com The Best in Video & Sound www.ampexperts.com www.basspig.com The Bass Pig's Lair - 20,000 Watts of Driving Stereo! -

3rd November 2008, 19:14	#4 \| Link
Leak ffdshow/AviSynth wrangler Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Austria Posts: 2,441	If VLC manages to BSOD your XP something else must be assisting it. Either you've got a bad audio or video driver installed, or your RAM, CPU or mainboard might be on it's way out. (Don't laugh, I just had that with freshly bought RAM...) Anyway, I'd recommend running a torture test with Prime95 (that beta supports multiple cores out of the box) for a few minutes (mine would error out after several seconds) and a few passes of MemTest86+ just to be sure... Bad RAM might also explain the verification error. np: Vladislav Delay - Pietola (Multila) __________________ now playing: [artist] - [track] ([album])

4th November 2008, 08:05	#5 \| Link
BassPig Registered User Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 302	I just finished a battery of tests, including Prime95 doing memory-intensive testing and the system passed every test set. I should emphasize that VLC doesn't BSOD with every VOB file I play--those from earlier projects are fine. It's just the VOBs from this latest project that are crashing the system. The fact that only these VOBs cause the BSODs and that only these VOBs fail the data verification in Nero, draws suspicion to them. However, I have no other means of testing the files to see what it is about them that makes them have this peculiar trait of crashing the VLC player. When burned to DVD, they don't do anything peculiar. As a side note, I need to mention that I experienced a number of BSODs two weeks ago when attempting to burn a DVD while Adobe Premiere CS3 was rendering an MPEG file. Each time this occured, the BSOD said that "a critical system process has stopped responding.." That rather disturbed me, but then, I'd never burned a DVD in the background while rendering MPEG files before, so I don't know if it's just an inability of XP to handle multitasking of resources, or a problem specific to this system. SYSTEM CONFIG: Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 XFX PVT80GTHF9 GeForce 8800GTS 640MB Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Mushkin Hp2-6400 Ddr2 4gb Kit Western Digital Caviar HD 500G\|WD 7K 16M SATA2 WD5000AAKS SILVERSTONE TEMJIN SST-TJ06S-W Silver Aluminum Seasonic S12 Energy Plus SS- 650HT Power Supply LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray burner HP LP3065 30" LCD Display Turtle Beach Montego DDL 7.1 Dolby Digital Pioneer DVR-112D ZALMAN 9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler Contour Shuttle-Pro ADDITIONAL INFO: After the BSOD from playing ANY VOB file of 1GB or larger, upon reboot, VLC won't run anymore. "VLC Media Player has encountered a problem and needs to close" is all the program will generate. I uninstalled and reinstalled it and it works fine until I attempt to play the large VOB files again. At which time I get the BSOD in cmudaX3.sys. After rebooting, VLC media player is damaged and needs reinstall. I thought that a Maxtor OneTouch drive that I had installed in the past month might be the problem, as the system problems seemed to start around that time, but having disconnected it solved nothing. I suppose I can try replacing all the system drivers for each peripheral one by one. We did have a lengthy power outage from a storm two weeks ago and it exceeded the run time of the APC 3000 UPS, so the system did get powered down while Windows was loaded, but it is rare that Windows gets damaged unless there is disc activity, but on an idle system overnight, I doubt that would be the case. UPDATE 2: I just uninstalled and reinstalled the Turtle Beach Montego DDL drivers (cmudaX3.sys) and retested and the problem persists, so it's not a corrupt cmudaX3.sys driver file and I have the most recent driver installed. What's really annoying is that every time the system BSODs with VLC player, I have to uninstall and reinstall VLC to get it working again, otherwise it just generates an error report. Short term solution for now is to disassociate .VOB extentions with VLC Media Player. __________________ Take care, Mark & Mary Ann Weiss www.mwhdvideo.com The Best in Video & Sound www.ampexperts.com www.basspig.com The Bass Pig's Lair - 20,000 Watts of Driving Stereo! - Last edited by BassPig; 4th November 2008 at 10:35.

12th November 2008, 08:47	#8 \| Link
BassPig Registered User Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 302	I just upgraded to the .94 version this evening and now I can play all of those clips without a crash. I think the .92 version was choking on Dolby Surround audio tracks. __________________ Take care, Mark & Mary Ann Weiss www.mwhdvideo.com The Best in Video & Sound www.ampexperts.com www.basspig.com The Bass Pig's Lair - 20,000 Watts of Driving Stereo! -

3rd November 2008, 19:11	#2 \| Link
Reimar Registered User Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 278	Since a BSOD is an OS-level bug there is something seriously wrong and it has nothing to do with the vob, VLC player or any user-level application. Now that leaves quite a bit of stuff and your guess is as good as mine, but have your tried it on a different PC? If you can't I would try running some memory checking tool to make sure the RAM is ok and also disabling virus scanners.

3rd November 2008, 19:13	#3 \| Link
avivahl Registered User Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 215	You might wanna run a memory check.

5th November 2008, 17:32	#6 \| Link
avih Capture, Deinterlace Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Right there Posts: 1,971	Give it a try on another system, just to see if it's a system issue or or a VLC issue (regardless of the correctness of the VOB files, VLC shoudn't BSOD) or some driver issue (try to update all MOBO/Display/Sound drivers to the latest). Also, try it with mplayer (MPUI/SMPlayer) and see if the log contains any interesting info, both on the original system and on a different system.

5th November 2008, 19:10	#7 \| Link
avih Capture, Deinterlace Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Right there Posts: 1,971	Also, VLC 0.92 is the 1st release of the new branch and it had many bugs. Latest VLC is 0.95, with many bug and crash fixes. For windows it's 0.94. Give it a go too, and check the log messages (Tools -> Messages).

15th November 2008, 17:28	#9 \| Link
Klaus_1250 Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 45	The 0.9.x VLC series aren't stable on Windows (yet). 0.9.2 was particularly bad, the more recent 0.9.6 seems to have improved but I doubt is it up-to-par with other players in term of stability.