Jittery DVD playback

does anyone know any software that will stop DVD playback being "jittery" and slow-ish - i'm getting pinged off with the movie start-stopping all the time :x

I've never had to use any 3rd-party software to ever make my DVD playback look smooth.

Give us details, OS, DVD drive, ram, currently software and we might be able to fix your current problems.

my machine is....

athlon xp 1700+
512ddr ram
80gb of hd (in one 20g and one 60g) with approx 40gb free
radeon 8500 128mb
sb live! value
sony DVD rom

playing DVD's using PowerDVD

Well one of the things to check is if your DVD drive is running DMA as that will help improve your performance, also that while playing dvds there isn't something else running in the background taking up all the memory.

It seems that your machine should play DVDs just fine, I think one of the others around here will have a solution.

DMA is on - i'm thinking -> would it have something to do with the cacheing software that came with the mobo - when i get home i might try turning that off.....

mobo : asus a7a266 w/ali chipset

nah that didn't work - any other suggestions?

Quote from Warlock:
nah that didn't work - any other suggestions?

Hey, do you have your DVD and main hard drive on the same IDE cable? If so, that might be the problem.

Darkwolf.

no , i have a 60gb and a 20gb on the first IDE and a CD-ROM and a DVD-ROM in the second IDE (makes for a very full hallmark case)

Ahh ive had similar problems on my old slow comp see if these work:
Lower ur rez while playing the DVD
Change ur sound options to normal stereo. Dolby has this thing that makes two speakers sound like surround but it takes a huge load to run
Pop in a cd drive cleaner and see if that helps
See if the DVD is scrached

well, i lowered the res and the playback wasn't so jittery(it's actually watchable) - thanks guys :D

now all i need is a prog to lower my res before playing the DVD and raise my res when it's all over - i just too f'n lazy to change res all the time and i like my 1280 x 1024 8)

power dvd has an option where it will change the rez for u
also it may be worth while looking at the sound options and make sure normal stero is selected

yeah, i did that with powerDVD, but it doesn't actually change desktop res - it changes the res it displays the movie at - and i changed the sound to stereo as well.

I might try dropping the res setting to 800x600 or something and see if that removes the jitters.

Thanks for the help guys, it was driving me up the wall!!

8500 includes Hardware DVD...use it.

maybe i'm a bit late on this though...:|

GF4's also have hardware support ( I think ).

I have a Hollywood DVD decoder card. Supprisingly how much better the image looks with hardware decoding. Everything is sharper, clearer, and more defined.

If U are still having decoding issues, get a DVD decoder card.

bleah. i'm getting jumpy audio in practically everything now. probably due to the shit sound card i'm currently using, ugh. (some yamaha thing)

Lots of problems caused while playing DVD's is due to the fact that not many of us have "decoder cards" which help decode the movie for smooth playback, a way around this is to use a program that software decodes ie. powerDVD but you are getting shit results, one way aruond thi I found was to use a better program, I suggest winDVD as it's free and plays them quite nice and wont overload your processor too much. It should not really matter what res you have the desktop on as the program should adjust to the res of the movie regardless so dont stress over that too much. See how you go with winDVD and let me know how you go, it should work fine as thats how I overcame the problem.

Pal.. What probs U havvin ? The Yamaha chip is meant to be pretty damn good..

And ZeReaper, winDVD isnt actually free.. And the download version only plays for 10 minutes, then it closes.

They normally require a key U get once U buy it online..

I have a legit version it came with my DVD drive.

Yamaha DS1 something or other. will be playing mp3s, and it'll skip a couple seconds of the song periodically, its not the mp3, since if you rewind it replays that section fine. also notice it in music videos, and sometimes dvds (even playing them from harddrive, which excludes the drive and disc from the problem). when i get bored enough with it i'll reenable onboard sound and try that again, see if it helps

I had one of those sound cards. Heaps of probs (craceling and support ect) and a real drain on resources. So i got me a SB Live Value with digital out second had for $40. No brobs for a year :)

well, i found another way to stop the jittery shite - re-install windows :P

the radeon 8500 i got was without any of the drivers or anything so i had to download the latest catalyst - either way, my flatmte now has a DVD player - so now i watch DVD's on TV :)

when you download the catalyst drivers there is a nother section called the multimedia MC or something. and this includes DVD player. hardware deconding and all that.

excellent quality :) much better than PowerDVD and any software DVD player imho.

Yamaha DS1?? i got one of them, had it for a while and i've never had any troubles with it, i got it second hand, found drivers no problems, and hey, for something that cost me next to nothing its perfect, i cant fault it