h a l f b a k e r yA riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a rich, flaky crust
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One of the most annoying things for me is when I'm watching a
movie and suddenly it gets a lot of static A-K-A "dropouts" and then
freezez in the middle of the movie because the disk was dirty or it
was old and worn out/scratched.
I rent movies a lot and it's inevitable that once in a while
you'll get a
movie that is dirty or broken.
You can of course just wipe the disk clean if it's dirty, but if it's
scratched, your movie may never work again except by sending it to
be "repaired" (yes, there are in fact services to "repair" DVDs and
tapes, believe it or not, but I think that those so called repair
services somehow rescue the recording and then copy it onto blank
media of the same format and return it, of course most likely
charging more than it would cost to just buy a new tape)
So, DVD players should, before playing the movie, do a "high speed
check". In other words, roll the disk as usual, but move the laser fast
across the disk, "sweeping" a few times, again rather quickly,
prefferably taking a minute or less so as not to make it take a
"painfully" long time to load. If the player detects any major issues-
ideally ones that could cause more than a minute of severe dropout,
the player will display an error message explaining that there's
something wrong with the disk and it may not play properly, suggest
cleaning the disk, and clearly state that if you want to try watching
it anyway you can simply press play to, well, play the movie and
dismiss this message.
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Annotation:
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yeah, something like that. [+] |
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[21Q] does your player ever hang during a section ? |
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nice idea, but i guess it is not possible to check the validity of data without reading it, and reading takes time. |
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You could just have a cat sit on it. |
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"Kinda happens already with some players I've had. It
either says "invalid disc," "Disc Corrupted," or "Unable to
read." Sorry, I gotta say this is Baked." |
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No-if the player detects larger abnormalities that may
cause problems during the actual movie when it's doing
the "sweep", the player will say on screen, something like
"your player has found some issues with the disk. the
movie can be played but may not work properly. you may
need to clean the disk. Press play to continue." |
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In other words, if the player can at least "find" the start of
the movie, it will then sweep across rapidly with the laser
on a few times. Presumably, even though it can't gather
any actual video footage, it should be able to detect any
scratches or gunk or other damage on the disk as long as
the laser is on during this "sweep". If it detects anything,
it gives you a warning and suggests cleaning the disk, but
gives you the option of watching the movie anyway in case
it "mis-reads" something that in fact doesn't hang up the
movie totally-just causes some minor (or not so minor)
dropouts. |
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the "Unable to read" message you see on current DVD/Blue
ray machines happens when the player tries to read, say,
the first few minutes of the movie, but it can't find any
readable data whatsoever, it will give up and assume that
it's a disk that is broken or the wrong format (i.e. a blank
disk in a non-recording machine or a recorded but
unfinalized disk from another machine, etc.) and show an
error message. |
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"you could just have a cat sit on it"
Given the nature of my cat, I'd be afraid that she'd chew
the wires :D besides, as much as I like cats, I doubt one
could do much to make the movie work again. What's she
going to do, hiss at it when it stops? |
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It irriates me when the movie stops. I think the DVD player is just being a prima donna. The player needs to suck it up: there is something there, show it, move on. I am reminded of the game Loderunner. One could design one's own levels. However the game would interpret _any_ file as a loderunner level if you told it to, and show the level accordingly. Some of them were very tough to play. |
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I agree with bungston- It's annoying how DVD players
freeze up from damaged disks. I wish those things would
just continue to follow the groove reguardless of whether
it can find anything or not, and continue searching ahead
for playable footage rather than just falling flat on it's
face. |
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Once it has started playing and established tracking, it
should be able to follow the groove by simply moving at
the same speed as before as though nothing had happened
even if it can't "find" the actual signal due to scratches or
whatever. |
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That's one of the things I miss about VHS tapes-unless the
tape was so badly damaged that it actually snapped or got
tangled up in the machine while it was playing, it would
continue playing the rest of the movie-even if a portion of
the tape was completely erased. Yeah, I know that's a
totally different method of recording, but it's such
characteristics that gives video tape it's "charm" |
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"nice idea, but i guess it is not possible to check the
validity of data without reading it, and reading takes time" |
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But don't CD players do something to this effect (not for
checking playability) already? If you put a CD in a cd player
but you don't push PLAY right away, it will show the total #
of tracks and the approximate running time of the CD. The
only way I can imagine it's able to do this is 1. "speed"
across the disk with the laser on while 2. searching for
"track markers" (what tells the CD player when to change
the display digit, or stop when "track skipping") and 3.
figure the end time by gauging how far the laser went
before no more music was found. |
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with a bit of tweaking a similar process could detect major
scratches/smudges on the disk (anything that would cause
"epic failure") |
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Speaking of this, I saw a rather amusing sign at my local
library "____________ library is not responsible for damage
caused to equipment by playing our movies/music"
Damage to equipment? How? I suppose if there was peanut
butter smeared on the bottom of the disk it could spin off
into your VCR and ruin your whole day :D Or, maybe
someone thought that scratched could be smoothed out
by pounding the disk with something heavy-and they hit it
with their VCR! Then they tried to sue the library! Or,
someone peed on the disk and then next customer
complained that their VCR smelled bad after watching the
movie! |
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