PowerDVD Corrupt After Backup

[malar]

I just want to know if anyone else has experienced this. I have made probably 40 or 50 backups without issues before.

I recently made a backup of Dawn of the Dead - the new one - and I did Reauthor. I left off all of the menus and extras, turned off unnecessary sound files, and also changed the start and end frames for less compression. After the burn, when I play the disc in my computer with PowerDVD 5.0 the quality is awful - lots of skipping and pixelization.

When I tried to play it with Windows Media Player 10 I got the message "There is a problem with the digital copyright protection." The backup plays perfect on 3 different standalone players - just not on my computer. However I uninstalled powerdvd and media player 10, then reinstalled powerdvd and everything was back to normal. It played like a perfect backup. I reinstalled media player 10 and it also played well.

I made a couple more backups without issue, then made a backup of Blade2. Now the problem is back again. The disc plays great in all of my standalone players, but no dvd disc will play correctly on my computer. And to top it off, I had a movie that I had encoded to divx and now it plays all messed up also.

Has anyone seen this problem? Is this related to Reauthoring and changing start and end frames in DVD Shrink 3.2?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[setarip]

Have you tried simply shutting down your system and doing a cold reboot?

[malar]

Thanks for the reply!

Hey how's it going. Thanks for reading and replying to my post. To answer your question, I have tried a cold-boot but to no avail. I tried uninstalling Media Player 10 and PowerDVD, then reinstalling PowerDVD but this time I am still getting the pixelization and skipping. I wonder if removing all of the ASPI will make a difference. I will try that tonight.

Thanks again and it was good to hear from you.

[setarip]

"this time I am still getting the pixelization and skipping"

Try running a DVD/CD cleaning disc on your burner and or player (DVD-ROM). Maxell makes one that retails for approximately $10US...

[malar]

Head cleaners deceptively sound fun

Yeah I tried that, no dice. I do not believe it to be a hardware issue. The rips and burns are perfect - it's just something about playback. Also, I have a divx movie on my hard drive that used to play perfect and now it plays goofy also.

The only other unusual thing about my system is that in the device manager, under IDE/ATAPI devices, instead of Primary and Secondary IDE Channels I have a Parallel ATA Controller and a Serial ATA Controller. The PATA controls my opticals, which both show as UDMA2. This is the only motherboard I have ever seen the IDE Channels show up this way.

ugggghhh!!!!! It's driving me batty. Thanks for your info though - it's nice to have a fresh take on the situation.

[jmet]

Sorta sounds like a video card problem to me. Maybe the drivers or something.

[malar]

Hey jmet thanks for the reply. Interesting idea so I downloaded the latest driver from nvidia, then uninstalled the display adapter, rebooted, and installed the newest driver. No joy, though. I'm starting to freak out on this problem. I don't watch movies on my PC, but just knowing that something isn't right bugs me.

[jmet]

Does other video that you have on your hard drive experience the same behavior? or is it just the disc you have burned?

[malar]

yeah the divx movie on my hard drive is all messed up also. it's very bizarre

[setarip]

If you're running WinXP, perform a "System Restore" back to the last time things were working properly...

[malar]

yeah...unfortunately I always turn off system restore because it is a safe haven for viruses. I am going to hook up another drive tonight and see if the playback is any better on the new drive.

[setarip]

"I am going to hook up another drive tonight and see if the playback is any better on the new drive."

Do let us know if playing from the new hard drive improves things...

[malar]

OK - I just don't get it. I swapped the drives between my two computers. The one with the problem was a Lite-On DVDRW LDW-811S. I replaced it with a 2X DVD-RW drive robbed from a Cyberdrive standalone DVD recorder. (Not really robbed I own the Cyberdrive but the power supply gave out).

Result: DVD playback is now perfect on both computers. The one that was using the Cyberdrive dvdrw is now using the Lite-On with no problem, and the one that had the Lite-On and was acting funny now has the Cyberdrive and is playing perfectly.

My guess is it is the motherboard - possibly an incompatibility issue, or a problem with the Raid drivers incorrectly recognizing my Lite-On as a hard drive. Anyways two days now and no more issues. ????????

Thanks for the help and insight jmet and setarip.

[setarip]

"And to top it off, I had a movie that I had encoded to divx and now it plays all messed up also."

And is this also playing properly now?

I'm guessing that while you were swapping burners, you also reseated (securely) the videocard and/or made certain all connections were secure - and cleaned out the innards of your PC...

[malar]

Actually just reinstalling the divx codec fixed the divx problem, however the dvd playback was still off.

I really didn't mess with any of my other hardware inside the case. I am still blaming the motherboard at this point. I burned a movie last night and it plays fine, but in the Event Viewer System log during the burn it listed several cdrom controller errors. I was getting this on the Lite-On drive also. The resolution for the error according to Microsoft is to replace the ribbon cable. I have done this (twice actually) but it made no difference. I even have the dvdrw drive on a channel by itself.

I'm going to save up a little dough and get a different motherboard - I bet I will have fewer issues.