DivX player bizarreness - any help?

[tzikeh]

This is baffling me. I bought a new Philips DivX player (DVP5960). I burned the first 7 episodes of Mad Men (avi format) to a DVD-R, and put it in the player. The episodes jitter - as if a frame or two is missing every five seconds. At first I thought it might just be this download, so I tried the first five episodes Pushing Daisies (avi format) - same problem.

I tested a disk I had burned last year - How I Met Your Mother, Season 1 (avi format). Played absolutely smoothly. Tested another from a while ago - Life on Mars Season 1 (avi format) - again, played perfectly.

I thought about what might have changed. One may have been the type of DVD-R I used -- the current ones are Ritek Ridata 8X blank matte; the old ones are Ritek Ridata 8x branded matte (with the big arrow imprinted on the top of the disc). I found an old branded matte disk and burned Mad Men - same jittery result.

My next thought was that I had burned the older stuff with Toast, and was burning the newer stuff with the built-in direct burner in OS X. Went back to Toast. Still jittery.

All of the .avi files play just fine on my computer.

I've tried everything I can think of. Any help? And can anyone point me to a good place to post this question besides my lj?

Comments

[loreleif.livejournal.com]

My DivX knowledge is shaky, but - maybe the codec itself? Something in the way both Toast and OS X are going through it to burn to DVD?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I don't think so, because the earlier stuff plays fine and it was burned the same way....

[jmtorres.livejournal.com]

Yes but: if the divx codec used in your new files is more recent than the divx codec used in the old files, the player might have trouble with it.

[klia.livejournal.com]

You might try hitting the MENU button twice (not the disc menu button, the system menu), which is something terrio discovered fixes some playback issues.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

should I do this while the disc is playing?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Well, that won't work, as my remote has no system menu button.

[klia.livejournal.com]

Yes, while it's playing.

What? How can it not have a system menu button?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

dunno. But it doesn't. I have:

disc menu
return/title
previous
next
stop
play/pause
USB
subtitle
zoom
repeat
repeat A-B
display
setup
audio

That's it.

[klia.livejournal.com]

Try the SETUP button and see if it pulls up a menu for the machine, itself.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

It does - but then there are a gazillion options.

[klia.livejournal.com]

Play the disc, hit the SETUP button -- the gazillion option menu will pop up -- then hit SETUP again (SETUP is basically the same thing as System Menu on other machines). That's what we do when files act up, and they usually play fine after doing that. Good luck.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Tried it - didn't work. Thanks anyway. Graar.

[klia.livejournal.com]

Crap. I wonder if it's something to do with the upconvert function? I think you have the same model as thevetia. I'll have to see if she has a fix.

[montanaharper]

I've found that the speed you burn at sometimes affects playback. I don't know enough about Toast or the built-in OS X burner to know if you can change your burn speed, though. I find if I burn things at about half the speed the disc is rated for, it plays better (e.g., burn at 4x for Ritek 8x discs).

Alternately, it could be a sign your DVD burner is flaking out. Set-top DVD players are notoriously more sensitive to burning flaws than computer DVD players are; can you play the burned disc okay in your computer?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice - unfortunately, I tried the "burn at half speed" thing, and that didn't work, and the DVD player is about 60 days old. At least Pioneer is willing to exchange it for me. If the next one doesn't work, I'm giving up and looking into another brand, even though I've heard nothing but wonderful things about the Pioneer DivX players. Heck, my old Norcent worked better than this and it was cheap and flimsy.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

From what I can find, this is a problem with firmware after 12.06.36.24 -- it has to do with the packed bitstream of the video; Philips apparently took out support for packed bitstream in newer firmware. The only fix I found for it was Windows-based, though, and involved unpacking the bit streams before burning (I think). Here's a page that has a variety of stuff about it, but I don't think there's a fix there.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

This site appears to have the firmware that does have packed bitstream support.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the pointer - I'll give it a try tonight! *mwah*