[Robertsonics]

Just finished putting together a system based on a Shuttle SS51G, with a 2.4G P4, 512MB RAM, 16X DVD Drive and a GeForce FX 5200. After reading through these forums, I got myself a copy of Zoom Player, the Sonic Cineplayer DVD decoder pack, and Reclock. Right off the bat, I have stutturing on playback - slight hesitations about 2 times per second, most noticable on slow panning shots. A great picture, but to me unwatchable.


Stuttering also is evident playing the same DVD with WMP and with the free InterAct player that came with something I installed. It goes without saying that my cheap Phillips stand-alone DVD player does not stutter at all.


Thinking that it must be the drive, I tried another to no avail.


I've always been very sensitive to this stuttering, and whenever I see PC's playing DVD movies at trade shows with evident stutter, wonder how people put up with it.


Can someone explain what is going on? Is this just the way it is playing DVDs on HTPCs, or have I done something wrong?


Thanks,


-Jamie Robertson

 

[Axel]

Jamie;


My first check would be to verify that "DMA is enabled".

You can check under OS Device Manger- IDE ATA Controllers.

____

Axel

 

[Robertsonics]

Thanks for the response. I should have mentioned that I did previously verify that DMA is enabled.


Interesting new data: I was reading another thread regarding the latest NVDVD decoder

 

[Robertsonics]

Oops, trigger finger...


Anyway, I was reading the thread about the latest NVDVD 4.029 decoder and decided to do a little sluething. I located it and gave it a try. No stutter whatsoever. Problem solved.

 

[mnn1265]

Quote:

Can someone explain what is going on? Is this just the way it is playing DVDs on HTPCs, or have I done something wrong?

Absolutely NOT! DVD's played via an HTPC should not stutter and will look significantly better than all but the most expensive progressive upscaling DVD players.


What you've found-out is that configuring an HTPC takes some time and effort and rarely works out of the box like a DVD player.

Quote:

Interesting new data: I was reading another thread regarding the latest NVDVD decoder

I'm not sure what you mean by that as I use that decoder and don't have any stuttering. If you're still having problems please list more specifically what software you're using and what the settings are. If you are using reclock that would be the first place I'd start to look....

 

[mnn1265]

Quote:

Oops, trigger finger...

OH great!


Posts crossed... glad to hear you've solved the stutter problem.

 

[Robertsonics]

Thanks for the feedback, and sorry for the confused posting - I somehow posted my last message mid-sentence.


The NVDVD decoder looks wonderful, and is absolutely smooth. Definitely solved my stuttering issue. Now I'm just a tad upset that I spent $15 on the Sonic decoder which appears to be useless on my machine.


Only remaining issue is audio sync. I'm sending a direct signal to an Onkyo receiver unit via SPDIF, and while the Onkyo is correctly detecting DTS, the resulting dialog is not very well aligned with the video. Not horrible, but definitely annoying. Like everything else so far, I suspect this is a solvable problem. Is there an easy means for time-aligning audio and video?


I've tried switching audio decoders and renderers in ZP, but haven't found the right combination I guess.


Thanks again for the assistance.


-Jamie

 

[Axel]

Quote:

Originally posted by Robertsonics ...Only remaining issue is audio sync. I'm sending a direct signal to an Onkyo receiver unit via SPDIF, and while the Onkyo is correctly detecting DTS, the resulting dialog is not very well aligned with the video. Not horrible, but definitely annoying. Like everything else so far, I suspect this is a solvable problem. Is there an easy means for time-aligning audio and video? .....

If audio is early you could adjust the delay time on your receiver if it supports it.


The recently released Theatertek2.0 (which also uses the 4.0 NVDVD filters BTW) now comes with a nice feature: in the audio tab you can actually advance/delay the DTS signal, by dialing in the “millisec delay of your personal liking†(pos. or neg.).

______

Axel

 

[Gushy]

Hi,

I had the same problem with dvd stuttering and could not seem to fix it. I could select dma but it was stuck in PIO. There is actually a windows bug which causes the ide controller to not switch to dma. The solution is to uninstall the ide adaptors, reboot, and let windows sort it out when it reinstalls. It worked for me and fixed the stutter problems, and now everthing shows up as dma

 

[OmicronOmega]

Quote:

Originally posted by Robertsonics Thanks for the feedback, and sorry for the confused posting - I somehow posted my last message mid-sentence. The NVDVD decoder looks wonderful, and is absolutely smooth. Definitely solved my stuttering issue. Now I'm just a tad upset that I spent $15 on the Sonic decoder which appears to be useless on my machine. Only remaining issue is audio sync. I'm sending a direct signal to an Onkyo receiver unit via SPDIF, and while the Onkyo is correctly detecting DTS, the resulting dialog is not very well aligned with the video. Not horrible, but definitely annoying. Like everything else so far, I suspect this is a solvable problem. Is there an easy means for time-aligning audio and video? I've tried switching audio decoders and renderers in ZP, but haven't found the right combination I guess. Thanks again for the assistance. -Jamie

Search about the ACPI issues

 

[emo]

Hi guys, I'm getting very rare stuttering - maybe two or three "skips" per movie. I figured it was some process firing off but after killing pretty much every process before watching a movie it's still there using both zoom and theatertek (and with any filter I pick - NV,PowerDVD,etc). I do have ACPI enabled but could that account for such rare and random stutters or should I be looking at something else? DMA is enabled and it happens on both drives (on pioneer one toshiba) in the system so I don't think its a bad drive issue.


Gonna try a full rebuild (sigh) but if anyone has any thoughts I'd love to hear them. Thanks

 

[Marty33]

Hi emo, I was plagued by very similar behavior recently when I upgraded my mobo&CPU. The standard answer is ReClock, I believe, but in my case it did not help...


(So I know it's a lousy feeling to upgrade and rebuild all this stuff and then lack the results you were hoping for...)


In my case the problem was *finally* solved when I found and installed newer audio drivers that specifically addressed compatibility between the audio card (Audigy I) and the new CPU (Athlon 64).


I'm sure there are a thousand other things that could be causing your problem, but maybe my experience will trigger some category of solution that will help you.

 

[Gary McCoy]

I recently resolved a similar issue with one of two DVD drives in my HTPC. These were both 16X devices but one would stutter and one would not. When troubleshooting the problem I found that the motherboard BIOS has auto-detected one drive as supporting PIO Mode 4 with an 80-pin cable, and the other was detected as having a 40-pin cable and was restricted to slower PIO Mode 2 operation.


This was obviously wrong since both were attached to the same 80-pin cable on the same IDE channel. Replacing the cable resolved the stutter, both are now detected as PIO Mode 4 devices.


Gary

 

[emo]

Well I'm glad to hear that the infrequent stutter isnt as rare as I thought (well glad in a sad kind of way).


The PIO mode should show up somewhere in my bios settings I gather right Gary? I'd love to find out that its just a cable thing though the worst part is that testing takes hours (doesn't always stutter at the beginning).


Marty you might be onto something there, I'm using the built in nforce soundstorm for my audio (SPDIF passthrough) and I think I've got the latest drivers but certainly worth a look (though there's no known issue chip wise that I know of).


Thanks for the tips guys, keep 'em coming

 

[Gary McCoy]

emo, it depends on whether your particular BIOS detects and displays the information. On my Intel motherboard, the function exists. Intel also gives you an Ultra ATA driver and a program called "Companion" that allows you to display this device status online.


Gary

 

[Vern Dias]

Don't make any more difficult than it has to be.


Just go into control panel - administrative tools - computer management - device manager - IDE ATA/ATAAPI controllers - Primary (Secondary) IDE Channel - Advanced settings and look there.


Or Right click my computer - properties - hardware - device manager etc.


Oh, yeah. One other thing... Using DHCP rather than defining static IP addresses has been known to cause intermittant stutters if your system in connected to a network.


Vern

 

[emo]

Device manager only shows me DMA not PIO mode (both drives in ultra dma 2) and it is a static address. The quest continues but the baseball playoffs are making it hard to test

 

[Gary McCoy]

I'm very familiar with device manager, and I can't get that info that way either, probably because I am running Intel device drivers, not Microsoft. Which is probably why Intel bothered to write the "Companion" application.


Persistence is the key, somebody has probably seen your problem before. When you get it fixed, please publish to help the other members.


Gary

 

[emo]

Well I did find out that my nforce drivers were out of date so I updated those but the baseball game ruined my testing time (damn you game 7s!). But this weekend is the make or break weekend where I'll be doing everything up to rebuilding the machine. I'll let you all know and thanks again for the tips.

 

[homebear]

I had a similar stuttering in my system. Finally beat it by turning off windows sounds in XP. Previously had replaced DVD drive, added DVD idle, and Reclock. My system is similar to yours (2.6G CPU, but that is close to 2.4). I now get smooth playback of all DVD's and Window's Media HD files up to 1080i. 1080P overtaxes my CPU and I get artifacts. One interesting test to do is to check your performance in Task Manager - my HTPC starts stuttering if the CPU load goes over 90-95% for any period of time.