Stuttering while playing DVD rips

Hi all;

I just got a WDTV Live Plus on Tuesday. I bought it to replace a Brite-view Cinematube primarily because of the Netflix support.

Unfortunately, in the last 2 days, with not a lot of heavy usage, I have experienced several cases where a DVD image playback would “stutter” and the sound would drop out.

These are DVD rips that are stored on a network share as the raw data files, i.e., a VIDEO_TS folder filled with VOB, IFO and BUP files.

I have played dozens and dozens and dozens of these things on my Cinematube without a single problem. I have a wired (MOCA) connection to my computer where all the files are stored on a network share. With the Cinematube, it played everything perfectly regardless of whether I was running BitTorrent software at the time.

With the WDTV, I’ve now had this stutter-no-sound problem on at least three different disc images. I turned off my BT client to see if that made a difference, but no dice. I upgraded the firmware. No dice.

Has anyone else experienced (or, more importantly, SOLVED) this problem or should I resign myself to packing this thing back in the box?

TIA.

Someone else reported the exact same thing, and for him, changing DVD ripping software corrected the issue.  

I’ll try to find the thread, it was fairly recent…

Well, considering that I already have hundreds of DVDs in this format, that’s not exactly a solution, but thanks for the info.

It sounds like otherwise, the WDTV is unable to handle this problem? Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

99% of my ripped DVDs get turned into ISO files.  These seem to play back without issue.

Recently tried playing a VIDEO_TS folder and experienced what you describe: film stutters and audio drops out.

Definitely a bug in the firmware.  DVD Menu support is very new to the live, so not entirely unexpected that it’s not quite perfect yet.  ;)

Should be something that gets fixed.  Eventually.

Could you try making one of the non-working folders into an ISO file to see if that fixes it?

Grant,

Did this happen on your Plus unit?

I’ve never used a straight DVD rip but now that I have a Plus I thought I’d try one and it seemed to work just fine (other than I had to wade through the @#$@% previews in the menu just like a regular DVD, except with no way to get to the main menu that I could tell).

I’m not sure I’d ever do this again (I can’t imagine a scenerio where I would need to do so) but I’m just curious if your Plus did this or it was the new firmware on your Live.

Should be something that gets fixed.  Eventually.

Um, yeah. You know what? I’ve only owned this thing for two days, but WD’s reputation preceeds it and I have zero confidence that it (or any other specific bug) will ever get fixed.

Could you try making one of the non-working folders into an ISO file to see if that fixes it?

I can try that. That’s not a terrible solution if it only affects a few rips. (I have no idea how widespread the problem is right now). Do you know a good program to do so, offhand?

I have the same bug. Stuttering seems very random but once it starts it does not cure eaily. Also if I reverse during the stutter it goes at -16X automatically.

@ Mike - Yeah, it’s happening on the new Plus box.  You can usually get to the main menu by hitting Options and selecting “Menu”.  

scratchie wrote:

Could you try making one of the non-working folders into an ISO file to see if that fixes it?

 

I can try that. That’s not a terrible solution if it only affects a few rips. (I have no idea how widespread the problem is right now). Do you know a good program to do so, offhand?

Well, the only program I ever used to make ISO files was DVD Shrink.  Go to Edit > Preferences and change the target DVD size to DVD-9.  Should make an exact copy of the VIDEO_TS folder in a couple of minutes.

Alternatively, grab ImgBurn.   Create Image File from Files/Folders.  Drag n Drop your VIDEO_TS folder on there and away you go.

I find DVD Shrink to be easier (and slightly quicker) but ImgBurn is capable of more stuff.

-edit-

Just ran a test / comparison.  

Weirdly, the menus aren’t working in the DVD Shrink (Shrunk?) ISO.

Menus work fine in the ImgBurn ISO.  I’d go with that one.  ;)

Shrink is not faster, if anything it’s slower because it’s analyzing the disc first.

FYI I tried two things which both worked:

First, I just copied the VOB file that was skipping under a *.mpg name in a different folder. That played fine.

Then I used ImgBurn to generate an ISO file and that played fine.

Very weird, and very annoying if I have to do that all the time… however, I played a few more “VOB file format” discs and they also played fine, so maybe it’s only an occasional problem?

I guess I need to spend this weekend watching videos to see how widespread the problem is. If it’s like one disc in ten, I can live with that (converting 1/10 to ISO). If it’s much more than that, this thing is going back in the box.

I played around with this some more last night and it’s a total no-go. About half the disc images I tried would not play properly, and there were some that wouldn’t play at all.

I wouldn’t mind if I had to convert the occasional VIDEO_TS into ISO – the ISO files are actually a lot more convenient to watch and organize, I discovered – but the reality is that most of the videos I get are in ViDEO_TS format and I’m not going to go through an extra step of converting every one.

Plus, the fact that such a basic function could be so flaky doesn’t give me any confidence in the firmware development team at WDTV. It can play the exact same video data perfectly if I copy it as an MPG file or ISO, so I don’t think it’s asking too much to want to play it in its original format.

Bye bye WDTV… come back CinemaTube, all is forgiven!

I did like having Netflix, though…

Have to admit to feeling very deflated that the much trumpeted DVD features we have asked for so long seems to have been implimented with little testing.

I can’t figure that out.   I spent a good number of hours in the last week re-ripping my DVD collection to ISO.   Quite a few of them have complex menu structures and high bit rates (for DVDs, that is.)  I haven’t encountered a SINGLE problem.   So far, I’ve done 160 DVDs and I have about 150 more to go.

Even one of my own Home Movie DVDs which screwed up my Philips DVD player play fine on the WD.

There’s got to be SOMETHING intrinsically different between what ya’ll are doing and what I’m doing to get such markedly different results.

I’ve been using DVDFab 7 to rip straight to ISO.  The only thing I’m removing from the structure is the region code and P-UOP flags.  Everything else remains as-is.

If I was a tester at WD, I’d have pronounced this thing right as rain given that I’ve seen zero issues.

TonyPh12345 wrote:

I can’t figure that out.   I spent a good number of hours in the last week re-ripping my DVD collection to ISO.   Quite a few of them have complex menu structures and high bit rates (for DVDs, that is.)  I haven’t encountered a SINGLE problem.  

 

 

There’s got to be SOMETHING intrinsically different between what ya’ll are doing and what I’m doing to get such markedly different results.

 

 

 

Yes, as has been posted multiple times in this thread, the problem only occurs if you play back from a VIDEO_TS folder, not a single MPG file or ISO image.

If I was a tester at WD, I’d have pronounced this thing right

as rain given that I’ve seen zero issues.

I’m not sure you’re *not* a WD tester, if you’re ready to close the book on this issue. 

scratchie wrote:

 


 

Yes, as has been posted multiple times in this thread, the problem only occurs if you play back from a VIDEO_TS folder, not a single MPG file or ISO image.

 

Wrong. I play from ISOs and it stutters, as does it for many others.

scratchie wrote:

 

I’m not sure you’re *not* a WD tester, if you’re ready to close the book on this issue.  

 

If you own a WD product, you’re a WD tester.  ;)

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Near as I can tell, the ISO/MPG bit rate of a DVD is going to be about the same as a Blu-ray compressed to MKV.  

So, if you’ve had problems playing media that requires bandwidths on the order of 7 to 9 Mbit / sec, you’ll probably also be out of luck with DVD ISOs.  

kosh2 wrote:

 


scratchie wrote:

 


 

Yes, as has been posted multiple times in this thread, the problem only occurs if you play back from a VIDEO_TS folder, not a single MPG file or ISO image.

 


Wrong. I play from ISOs and it stutters, as does it for many others.

 

I stand corrected. I’ve only had the problem playing raw VIDEO_TS folders. It seems to be related to discs that were created on standalone consumer DVD burners.

Ahhh, scratchie…  You may be on to something there.

Quite a while back, I made backup copies of quite a few DVDs using DVD Decrypter (the old one) and Nero.

I had no problems playing them on DVD players.  I usually stationed my backups in the Minivan so the heat wouldn’t destroy my originals.  But those same backups gave software like Handbrake FITS.  Turns out that some of the NAV data in the VOBs are in compatible with dvdnav open source libraries.   

I wonder if the WDTV is employing lib.dvdnav, and your self-burned ROMs have the same inconsistencies.   

If you’re at all curious, you could try loading one of those DVDs into handbrake and see if it scans it properly.   (On mine, it’d go into an endless loop of errors in the Activity Log, and I’d have to kill the program.)