DVD Not Clear On Playback

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, May 13, 2007 at 04:27:03PM -0400, Glen Strom wrote:
> I replaced my old cd-rom and cdrw drives with dvd-rom and dvd-writer
> drives. The DVD seems to play fine -- no jerky motions or dropouts and
> the sound is fine -- until people start to move. Then I get a ghosting
> effect, not unlike a Star Trek kind of "phase shift". When the people
> stop moving, everything is clear again. 
> 
> The new drives are as follows:
> - LG Electronics Model GSA-H22N DVD-Writer
> id:   cdrom:0
> description:   IDE CD-ROM
> product:   HL-DT-STDVD-RAM -- LG Electronics GSA-H22N
> physical id:   0
> bus info:   ide at 1.0
> logical name:   /dev/hdc
> version:   1.01
> capabilities:   packet atapi cdrom removable nonmagnetic dma lba iordy
> configuration: mode  =  udma2
> 
> - Lite On DVD-ROM  Model SHD-16P1S
> id: cdrom:1
> description: DVD reader
> product:   LITE-ON DVD SHD-16P1S
> physical id: 1
> bus info: ide at 1.1
> logical name: /dev/hdd
> version:   GS07
> capabilities:   packet atapi cdrom removable nonmagnetic dma lba
> iordy audio dvd configuration:
> mode  =  udma2
> 
> 
> 
> My System Specs are as follows:
> - Dell Dimension 4100
> - Intel Pentium III (Coppermine), 930 MHz
> - L1 Cache 32-kb SRAM, L2 Cache 256 Kb
> - 512 Megs of memory
> - video card: ATI Rage 128 Pro with 16 MHz of memory
> 
> I only have the one DVD so I can't test out another one. I suspect my
> video card is the problem because it really is ancient. Does this sound
> like a video card problem or something else?

What kind of monitor do you use?  Your description sounds a lot like a
crappy old LCD with a much to slow transition speed.  Older LCD monitors
were terrible at action games and movie playback because of their slow
updates.

Now if these are your own home made DVDs then it may simply be that the
encoder used was bad or run with the wrong options.

Now it is a rather slow machine, although I have done dvd playback on
slower than that reasonably well.  My athlon 700 plays dvds perfectly,
although I know for sure the nvidia 6600 gt drivers do xvideo
acceleration so the yuv conversion and such are done in hardware, which
is an otherwise huge load on the cpu so that probably helps a lot.  I
have no idea if tha rage 128 does that, or if the drivers support it or
not.

> I have another minor problem with these drives. They play data CD's at
> a much higher speed than the old drives did, and the playback is very
> noisy. Is there a way to tell the drives to spin at a slower speed?

Depends on the drive.  You can tell Plextors to slow down.  Not sure
about any other brands.

--
Len Sorensen
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