No DVD sound. DVD Decoder or... ?

[Teddy]

So finally Windows has a built-in DVD decoder! Sadly, I'm not sure it
works...

So since installing Ultimate, I haven't been able to watch a DVD. With Media
Player or Media Center, the DVD has no sound. In WMP, the screen also goes
black for a second or two every ten seconds or so. Very annoying. At least
Media Center doesn't have the black screens. But it would be nice to hear
the audio. This behavior is the same whether the DVD is in my Sony DVD-R or
Toshiba DVD drive.

So - I tried to uninstall the DVD devices and Creative Audigy and restart,
but Vista apparently just keeps reinstalling them before I can even restart.
I've installed the latest video drivers for my nVidia 7600. I don't think I
have any internal audio cables hooked up; just the IDE cables - do computers
even use those dedicated audio cables anymore? Could the decoder be pushing
sound to some kind of digital out? I'm not sure where that setting would be,
but my speakers are plugged into the analog 1/8" headphone jack. Of course,
neither of those last two options would explain the constant blacking out
anyway.

What should I do?!? Thanks so much for any help anyone can provide!

Teddy

PS - if this would be better under windowsmedia or windowsmedia.player or
windows.mediacenter or multimedia.windows.mediaplayer... or anywhere else...
please let me know!

 

[Guest]

Teddy,

The built-in Vista DVD capability likely won't play disks made by copy
programs. I don't know what DVDs you're using, so this is just for
information. My Vista Home Premium plays DVDs just fine, so it does work. I
have a SATA player, which has no sound output connection, as is standard for
SATA players. At least in my case, the audio is part of the data stream,
along with the video stream. So, I'd say your sound issue is likely not
caused by a missing separate audio line-out. Just some thoughts.

 

[Richard Urban]

Vista needs codes if you want to watch a video file with the .avi extension.
I use Divx 6.2 and it works fine.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Richard Urban]

Sorry. That should be: Vista needs codec's


--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Teddy]

Thanks for all your help, so far.

I'm not watching AVI files... nor am I watching copied DVDs. Just a
manufactured DVD!

T

 

[Teddy]

Well, I fixed it and I hope this helps anyone else out!

I should have gone with my gut instinct: Vista sets digital out to default!
So I went to control panel -> hardware & sound -> sound. On my system, two
things appeared: "Speakers" and "Digital Audio Interface." The latter was
set to default, so I simply highlighted "Speakers" and clicked "set to
default."

Strangely, this also seems to have repaired the blacking-out problem. I have
no idea why, but I'm not going to ask questions.

BTW - I got my tip from here:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1646244&SiteID=17

T

 

[TheNetAvenger]

Be careful about installing codec already used in Vista. For example there
was a Vista pack running around that used an open source MPEG2 decoder that
replaced the Vista DVD codecs. It worked ok, but the videdo drivers from
NVidia and ATI would no longer accelerate the video as they we not built to
work with this codec. (It usually don't matter to most people, but if you
are using Ultimate or DreamScape and playing video on your desktop
wallpaper, the difference is having 2-5% CPU usage max and having 80% CPU
usage.

Good Luck to everyone, and be careful with codecs that are already built
into Vista, as the built in ones are designed to go through the GPU driver
accerlations available.

 

[Richard Urban]

That is exactly WHY I stated Divx 6.2

I know, for a fact, that these work flawlessly!

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!