PeterH wrote: > > On Jun 1, 2009, at 10:13 PM, Bill Connelly wrote: > > >>When I playback DVDs, one in particular completely freezes up my >>Yikes! at the same point. Some DVD files are choppy at first, and >>"smooth out" as they playback, especially in Full Screen Mode. > > > Some DVDs are inadvertently improperly authored. > > Some DVDs are intentionally improperly authored. > > An example of the first case is "Land of the Pharaohs" (1955), a > recently released Warners title. Warners is not known for > intentionally improperly authoring their DVDs. But a few do slip > through. > > The flaws in "Pharaohs" occur in two places: about 3 minutes from the > fade-in of the main titles and about 13 minutes before the fade-out > of the end titles. The flaws are complete skips of about 9 minutes in > each instance. The first loss is really just a lot of "fluff" about > the Pharaoh himself. The second loss is essentially the entire > "secret" of how the Pharaoh's pyramid was made tamper-proof, and > which is the essential point of the entire screen story. > > What one sees is a burst of random color on the screen followed > instantly by a skip to about 9 minutes later in the movie. > > In the case of the first skip, it is possible to manually skip > backwards and resume the film at approximately the point at which the > disturbance first occurred. You have to skip backwards just enough, > but not too much! > > In the case of the second skip, it is impossible to manually skip > backwards. It is just as if those 9 minutes are not on the DVD at all. > > I doesn't matter, in this specific case, if the manufactured DVD is > attempted to be played, or a "ripped" copy of the same is attempted > to be played, the flaws are in both. I guess that says a lot about > how faithful the various ripping programs can be. > > Even worse than skips are freezes. > > Some set-top players are good at skipping over freezes whereas others > are not. A lot depends upon the device's firmware. > > In the worst case, a set-top box may have to be rebooted by pulling > the power plug in order to restart its firmware. > > In the case of DVD Player, a "Force Quit" accomplishes the same > thing, but this doesn't work if the application is in full-screen > mode as there are no selectable points on the screen when gets one > back to the Finder and from which one can force the process to quit.
Yet another factor is just plain ol' dirt. Often, cleaning a rented DVD will fix that. A friend who uses Netflix regularly cleans 'em before use and this practice has prevented a lot of aggravation on his part. I've had the same issues and have resorted to same action. JT --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to g3-5-list-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
