Dear Forum,

I am running Slackware 12.0 on a Dell Dimension 5100 desktop with a
"TSSTCorp" CDROM/DVD drive. When watching DVD videos, we can watch a
film for about 90 minutes and then the video starts dropping frames.
Sometimes Xine dies altogether, and sometimes if I log out and restart
it, it works okay. I thought this was a Xine issue, so I upgraded
Xine, then installed VLC yesterday and the exact same thing happened
both times. This is in KDE, Xfce and Enlightenment.

This has only started happening since upgrading to Slackware 12, so
I'm thinking it may be HAL-related. Could this be caused by the drive
heating up? Where should I head to adjust the speed, etc?

Thanks,
Joel

I doubt it's HAL.

You can turn hal off and test that way to rule it out. Hal is not necessary to use the dvd drive. Could the dvd be dirty and causing your drive to work extra?

I recently solved a similar issue on my own machine. The cause was the wireless driver, madwifi. Whenever I use my Atheros-based card i get video "jitters" in xine but sound is still ok. When I use my ndiswrapper-based card movies play flawlessly.

DEFINITELY. These DVDs are from Netflix, the same whose Monty Python and the Holy Grail killed our stand-alone DVD player.

However, sometimes we'll put in one of our DVDs just to test it, and it still skips. The drive could have still been overheated in all these cases.

@dracolich, can you explain the connection between your wifi driver and the optical drive?

Thanks,
Joel

It still puzzles me why it occurs. I was deeply concerned when I first noticed it - whenever I played a dvd, every 5-7 minutes there would be video jitter for a second. In some movies it's less noticable, but in something with a lot of action it can be disturbing. My fist idea at the time was DMA on the drive but adjusting hdparm settings had no effect.

When I upgraded ndiswrapper and plugged in the associated card to make sure it works, I then played a dvd and no jitter. That's when I realized that prior I had always been using the madwifi card. Just to be sure, I switched cards and tried some more and I get the same results: madwifi causes jitter, ndiswrapper doesn't.

This may be an isolated case but I still offer the idea to others with similar symptoms on the chance that it isn't. It started for me while I still had Slackware 11, and with 12 I turned off hal and dbus almost immediately since I prefer the manual approach.

That sheds some new light. That's why I don't rent dvds anymore. I always cringe when one of my players gets stuck on a bad spot. I worry about the laser carriage mechanism when it reaches a scratch and begins moving back and forth, searching he disc for the next bit. That can't be good for something with motorized parts. All players do generate heat, though, and excessive heat can damage electronics. I've often noticed when I remove a disc immediately after it's stopped that the disc is warm, but I'm going to guess heat isn't the problem in your case.

Well, I don't think overheating or memory is the problem anymore
because last night we tried to start a movie exactly where it left off
(started to drop frames) and it started skipping right away. I've
dusted the drive, and clean the disc, but it makes no difference.
Then we put in a different (also Netflix) DVD and it worked just fine
(only minor skipping).

Is the drive just getting old? It's three years old. Our stand-alone
DVD player lasted exactly two years --- it died the day after the
warranty would have lapsed if we'd gotten the warranty. I have no
problems playing CDs (most of mine are immaculate), not even skipping.

Joel