Problems swapping DVD's during playback

[Dave T]

Is it just me, or is there a problem when you eject a DVD during playback and insert another DVD? I was demoing my system during a party the other night, and if I tried to eject a DVD during a movie and insert another DVD, I would get a black screen. I had to stop the TT player and restart it before it would play the new movie.

I'm using v1.1.065.

- Dave

[TheaterTek]

Dave,
A lot depends on whether you used the Eject funtion in TT or just pressed the eject button on the DVD drive.
DVD drives are notoriously poor at communicating back to the operating system when an eject has occurred which can lead to instability in running applications using the drive.

Ejecting from within TT should be much more reliable.

Regards,
Andrew

[JKohn]

I've also found it works best if you hit Stop first, and then use TT's Eject command.

[MikeM]

This has been a common problem in many DVD software players I have come to discover over the past year. It used to bug me why I would seem to get flawless playback when I just sit down to watch a film and leave vs. pouring ovr several scenes from several different disks. The latter can cause a nightmare with hang-ups, freezes and total shut downs for the reasons you indicated. There's no doubt that disk swapping is not a user friendly exercise in the world of HTPC, but to just watch the disk from start to finish -- the success ratio is much better.

[Dave T]

Yes, I was ejecting on the PC. I have a rack-mount HTPC, with a door over the front, so I avoid ejecting from the remote - not cool if the door is closed, or partially closed.

So, there is nothing that can be done about this? I don't recall having this problem when I was using WinDVD... And, I think that TT was correctly detecting the eject, too. I'll experiment with TT,and try ejecting with WinDVD again, and report back.

- Dave

[jschefdog]

Did you disable the "Auto Insert Notification" for the drive? I tried this at one time as a way to eliminate the PC Friendly messages, and it caused some very strange behavior if I ejected disks using the DVD drive button. I would get the menu from the previous disk instead of the new one.

[Karnis]

I always have "auto-insert notification" turned off. I swap DVDs without closing TT all the time while experimenting with new resolutions/aspect ratios with never a problem...easily 7 or 8 DVDs. If I "eject" a disc and put a new one in the tray, I push the "p" button and it closes the tray cleanly every time. Now since I have "A_I_N" disabled, I have to push "p" again to play the disc, but this method works for me with no problems.
Jeff also makes a very good point, always press "stop" before "eject".

[Carey P]

Wayne,

And by using Play to close the tray, you don't have a problem with the stored AR for that disk coming up properly?

On my system, the second hit of Play the disk always starts with a default "locked AR" rather than the one I have stored for that DVD. To get around this I always "push" the tray in manually and hit Play. And to fix the above problem, you simply Stop and Eject the disk from software, then manually push the tray in and hit Play again.

This is something Andrew tried hard to fix, but it just was not posible with the current decoders. It's easy enough to remember to push the tray in after loading a new disk. I have never had problems with this.

Carey

[Karnis]

Originally posted by Carey P
Wayne,

And by using Play to close the tray, you don't have a problem with the stored AR for that disk coming up properly?

On my system, the second hit of Play the disk always starts with a default "locked AR" rather than the one I have stored for that DVD.
Carey

Well, you must remember I really don't do per-DVD special ARs, as I made sure my defaults settings cover just about everything. In fact I can think of only 2 discs I have special ARs...Tarzan:CE (zoomed a bit to get rid of the side bars) and Deliverance (wow, thats a wide movie!)
But to be honest I haven't popped in Tarzan while TT is already open so I'll see if the per-DVD AR is applied.

[Carey P]

Wayne,

I guess I wasn't too clear. This problem doesn't have anything to do with custom AR's. As far as I know, whether you use custom AR's or your default settings, TT still stores them for each disk. If you haven't seen this problem, consider yourself lucky and leave it at that .

[Dave T]

I just played with this some more, and narrowed it down a little.

It seems to be due to some interaction with Dilard and/or Powerstrip. On DVD insertion, I have Dilard set to run a macro, which, among other things, sets the resolution to 1360x768 on my D-ILA, using Powerstrip. If I comment out the powerstrip call in the macro, the DVD-insert lockup problem stops happening. This is even if the resolution is already at 1360x768. Strange...

Also, by the way, when I stick a DVD in and the TT message "do you want to start where the dvd left off" comes up, if I answer "Yes", TT always locks up. It also does this if I shut down TT and restart it with a DVD already in the drive. So, there seem to be other problems with my install. I'll do a search to see if there is a known fix for that, but if anyone monitoring this thread has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it!

- Dave

[Karnis]

I have not seen a problem with the auto-resume feature. You can disable it in the video tab of the configure screen.
Carey:
I see what you are talking about, I believe. If I start TT with Tarzan in the tray, the stored AR info is applied. If I play another disc, eject and put Tarzan back in and play, the stored info is not applied, it just reads the DVD flag.
I wonder if a "refresh current DVD" hot key is possible?

[Carey P]

Wayne,

Yes, now you're talking. That and "current DVD" as part of the AR Cycle would be great. I assume you see the problem only when hitting Play while the tray is still out, not manually pushed in.

I may have a theory on why you only see this problem with those "special" disks. Are your 4 default AR's saved with the "locked" AR box checked? In this case, you probably would never notice, since the real problem is that TT ignores the "saved" AR, whatever it is, and uses the DVD flag to pull up the default AR - though in "locked" AR mode only.

So I think it is only if you use Unlocked AR's for your default 4 settings, that you would noticed this problem. I use Unlocked AR's, because I need to vertically stretch each one of them for the Panamorph. Does this make sense now?

Carey

[Karnis]

Originally posted by Carey P
Wayne,

Yes, now you're talking. That and "current DVD" as part of the AR Cycle would be great. I assume you see the problem only when hitting Play while the tray is still out, not manually pushed in.

I may have a theory on why you only see this problem with those "special" disks. Are your 4 default AR's saved with the "locked" AR box checked? In this case, you probably would never notice, since the real problem is that TT ignores the "saved" AR, whatever it is, and uses the DVD flag to pull up the default AR - though in "locked" AR mode only.

So I think it is only if you use Unlocked AR's for your default 4 settings, that you would noticed this problem. I use Unlocked AR's, because I need to vertically stretch each one of them for the Panamorph. Does this make sense now?

Carey

Sorry....all my default ARs have "lock" unchecked.
Sounded good, though.

[siwilson]

Could this have something to do with HW Acceleration ?

I run W2k with 3276 drivers and if I have HW accel enabled I get all sorts of weird behaviour if I do anything fancy like change resolution after boot.

Maybe try without HW accel and see if the problem is the same ?

[Carey P]

Wayne,

Oh well. So much for my theories