When playing DVD titles in software, there are several things that are important
for smooth playback, these are (in order of importance):
- Setting your DVD-Rom to use DMA mode (See FAQ section to see how it's done).
- Selecting the correct DeInterlacing mode ("Force Weave" for movies, "Force Bob" for Interlaced streams such as trailers).
- Having a good display adaptor with fast Colorspace Conversion.
- It's a plus to have a display adaptor with Hardware Motion Compensation and possibly iDCT acceleration.
When loading up the movie, it is very important to IGNORE Interlaced encoded sequences.
Such sequences will have degraded quality on a progressive computer monitor, resulting in horizontal streaming.
This can confuse people and make them think their DVD is configured incorrectly or that they have
selected the wrong DeInterlacing mode. However, playing most progressively encoded movies will show the real DVD quality.
When playing anamorphic widescreen DVD Titles, I strongly advise switching to 1024x768 mode. If this
is not done, you will lose image quality due to the scaling required with the correct aspect ratio of these movies.
Screen Refresh rates are also very important. You must set your card to the highest possible
refresh rate your monitor can support without distortions. This is very important as it
will allow for less tearing during screen pans and for an overall sharper image. A refresh
rate of 100hz or better is highly recommended. Everything under 75hz is REALLY BAD.
And now regarding display adaptor memory and display modes. First of all you should know
that DVD playback requires a lot of video memory. So if you are getting messages that an
overlay can't be created, or you notice severe slowdowns at high color modes (24bit,32bit)
you should change the color mode to 16bit or even 8bit.
"8bit?" you say? Im not sure if you're aware of this, but overlay windows
are color-mode independent. That means, that for all intent and purpose you can be in
2 color mode and the overlay window will still be 24bit true color. What is that useful
for you ask ? Well, by lowering your display color depth to 8bit, you can play DVD titles
at a higher resolution. On a 4mb card you can play a full-screen DVD title at 1280x1024x8bit.
However, I don't really suggest playing at resolutions over 800x600 for full-screen
and 1024x768 for wide-screen, as it creates scaling artifacts.
