Problems with Iron Giant

[not_steve_mcqueen]

I was able to rip The Iron Giant: Special Edition to my HDD successfully. However during playback, the movie hangs in several places and forces you to skip a few seconds ahead to get past it.

When I play the original DVD it plays glitch-free.

It always hangs in the same places when I try to play it back, no matter how I rip it(MainMovie, Full Disc).

I am currently using 6.2.0.5.

I am somewhat new at this as well. This is the first problem I couldn't fix myself by perusing the forums.

Thanks for any help you can give me!

!SteveMcQ

[GregiBoy]

Try setting your burn speed slower and make sure that you have good, reliable brand blanks.

[not_steve_mcqueen]

Thanks for replying!

I guess I wasn't that clear earlier. I am actually just playing back the movie from my HDD when it hangs up. I haven't gotten as far as burning it to a DVD yet.

[maineman]

Ahh, I wondered where the burn log was...
My first guess is that perhaps the software player is not up to the task.
What player are you using?

Please download and install VLC...it's free, does not rely on external codecs and will play just about anything.

VLC

[not_steve_mcqueen]

I was using WM Player for the playback. However, I have played several movies on my PC in like fashion and not had a problem. Like I said though, I am new at this and I don't really understand what all goes on software-wise.

I will try it this evening after work. Thanks!

!SteveMcQ

[maineman]

I was using WM Player for the playback. However, I have played several movies on my PC in like fashion and not had a problem. Like I said though, I am new at this and I don't really understand what all goes on software-wise.

I will try it this evening after work. Thanks!

!SteveMcQ

Yup, sounds like a plan.
Just trying to isolate the problem here and VLC is far superior to WMP in this regard.
I don't have this flick, but are you compressing the files when ripping to your hdd?

[not_steve_mcqueen]

I try to rip them w/o quality loss, so I click on DVD9 before I rip. I hope that's what you mean...

I have used HandBrake to compress some movie files before, but I haven't done it with this one.

BTW, if you haven't seen it, Iron Giant is great. I rate it up there with some of Pixar's better ones.

[maineman]

I try to rip them w/o quality loss, so I click on DVD9 before I rip. I hope that's what you mean...

Yes, that's exactly what I was asking.
And thanks for the review...I'll have to check it out

[AGJ]

this is an old movie and you can try to do the movie with Pathplayer disabled to see if that gives you better results

[not_steve_mcqueen]

Pathplayer?

this is an old movie and you can try to do the movie with Pathplayer disabled to see if that gives you better results

I have actually tried it on all three different settings of Pathplayer after reading many of the posts. They all had the same result, unfortunately.

A little off topic: what does Pathplayer do? I have seen it referred to throughout the forum but I've not run across a real explanation of what it does.

[maineman]

The best "lay" description I've seen is from my good friend GregiBoy:

A simple, non-technical explanation:-

Pathplayer navigates through the disk as it was actually playing the DVD and finds the valid content.

The new attempts at copy protection are inserting dummy entries with heavy protection that do not get played in a normal set top player and Pathplayer attempts to identify these and remove them from being needed to be processed.

[not_steve_mcqueen]

Ahh, I wondered where the burn log was...
My first guess is that perhaps the software player is not up to the task.
What player are you using?

Please download and install VLC...it's free, does not rely on external codecs and will play just about anything.

VLC

I just got finished trying to play the ripped version with VLC. It will play without hanging however, it just skips over the parts that WM player would hang up on. It skips about ten seconds at a time and there are several parts skipped.

This seems to indicate to me that this has something to do with decoding or copy protection. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the disc itself, it plays flawlessly before and after I cleaned and buffed it.

Thanks for the Pathplayer explanation, maineman, that cleared it up a bit.

Thanks for everyone else's help so far as well!

!SteveMcQ

[not_steve_mcqueen]

Found a solution!

I just got finished trying to play the ripped version with VLC. It will play without hanging however, it just skips over the parts that WM player would hang up on. It skips about ten seconds at a time and there are several parts skipped.

This seems to indicate to me that this has something to do with decoding or copy protection. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the disc itself, it plays flawlessly before and after I cleaned and buffed it.

Thanks for the Pathplayer explanation, maineman, that cleared it up a bit.

Thanks for everyone else's help so far as well!

!SteveMcQ

I tried to rip it using an old version of DVDFab and it worked like a charm!

I guess there were a few things lost in the newer versions.

Thanks for everyone's help!

!SteveMcQ

[GregiBoy]

It is always a smart move to have both versions installed for circumstances such as this.

Versions 3, 4, 5 & 6 will all happily co-exist on the same machine as they install in different directories.

Glad to hear you got it resolved.

[not_steve_mcqueen]

It is always a smart move to have both versions installed for circumstances such as this.

Versions 3, 4, 5 & 6 will all happily co-exist on the same machine as they install in different directories.

Glad to hear you got it resolved.

I realize now that it is designed that way. I guess I will stop deleting the old DVDFab version when I install the new one.

Live and Learn, I guess.

Cheers!

!SteveMcQ