Sliced up PowerDVD playback

[Paulgo253]

Hi. I recently up graded to PowerDVD 5 which looks great - however on playback a diagonal "slice" in the movie appears on the screen - (normally top left) usually associtaed with lateral movement, pans etc especially during action scenes etc. It is literally is if the movie image has been cut and then not able to properly match as the scene pans, particualrly right to left.

Tried fiddling with the settings but to no avail! I'm running a XP1800 chip, 512 DDR ram, Windows XP and a Radeon VE card. Other perculiarity is that normally with other players on TV out the computer video playback screen is blanked - this one isn't and it does the slicey thing on both screens. This is prob nothing to do with it at all, but maybe.

Apologies if it's real obvious but after finally sorting a long series of other problems (although I still can't figfure out why WinDVD randomly locks up) the upgrade seemed the answer - apart from this!

thanks!

[Enchanter]

Try disabling Hardware Acceleration from within PowerDVD. You might also find some luck in updating your video card driver.

Regards.

[SupraSPL]

I have the same problem with WinDVD5 on occasion. The problem does NOT manifest itself when using Windows Media Player 9. (which I dislike using unfortunately)

[Paulgo253]

slicey PowerDVD

Thanks Enchanter! - disabling hardware acceleration does seem to have worked - could have sworn I'd tried that, but obviously not! I must admit I've been a bit hesitant updating my graphics drivers - think I'm on Cat 3.8 for the Radeon VE but I'd read of some probelms with the 3.9 drivers, over heating and things, and my card is getting on a bit. But you're right, it's probably a good idea.

Funnily enough I didn't have any similar problems with Windvd5 (at least the trial version) and I've always preferred Windvd - but it just keeps locking up normally when I fiddle with the settings during playback, but sometimes just during normal play - although here media player 9 does do the same thing but less often... no ideas on that one other than to upgrade my system. At least one of my players seems to work now!!

many thanks guys!

[Enchanter]

You're welcome.

[SupraSPL]

I updated my video card driver and mpeg2 encoder, and downloaded Windows Media Player 9 again afterwards. Total sucess!

WinDVD doesnt shimmy its speed, and media player 9 gained complete control of it AV sync as well.

No slicing anymore, but windows media player 9 still has a better picture (less blocky at least) than WinDVD 5.

Too bad that Windows media player has crappy shortcuts on the keyboard Ctrl+Shft+F and CTRL+Shft+B as opposed to WinDVD: F and R and ENTER and SPACEBAR.

Thanks for suggestions, Good LUK!

[Enchanter]

Good to see another happy camper.

Cheers.

[Paulgo253]

Well I guess I'm convinced - I'll install the latest drivers and see what happens! Noticed that some of my SVCD's play very blocky, on all the players, but not on a standalone player so maybe this might help too. Um, showing ignorance here but how do I sort out my mpeg2 encoder? Never really looked at that - just assumed I was ok. I think the only time I encode mpeg 2 is to SVCD and I use the DVD2SVCD package or is there something else I should look at?

cheers!