To watch a DVD Movie - What viewer.app?

[NovaScotian]

It's pretty clear to me after some experiments that DVD Player 4.6.5 is defective at least on a dual-core G5/2.3 (2G RAM) runing Tiger 10.4.4 and nothing else going on that would press the CPU. When I try to view a movie I've owned for some time (the original DVD) the Player "hunts" and shows the movie frame by frame with a lot of audible reader seeking in between. The disk is ok - it played on an old Thinkpad T-30 (although I didn't watch it there because I couldn't seem to get past a whole pile of Warner Brothers queries to install something wonderful for me). What is frustrating is that I have watched part of it before on a G3 with an aftermarket DVD player installed running 10.4.3.

Assuming the DVD Player.app is not up to snuff in general, what do folks use to watch a DVD Movie? You know - something where you just shove in the DVD and the movie appears on your screen?

[cwtnospam]

VLC
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/5758

[hayne]

DVD Player usually works just fine for me.
I would suspect the disk (have you tried other DVDs?) or possibly the drive.

[NovaScotian]

Quote: Originally Posted by hayne DVD Player usually works just fine for me. I would suspect the disk (have you tried other DVDs?) or possibly the drive.

I had watched this movie part way through at one point on a G3 then cloned that system to my G5 (brand new), which cloned its preferences as well. Since the player works with the install disks perfectly well, and burns backups without a hitch I think I might have "fouled" the preferences. When I've time, I'll try to find them, toss them and report back.

[hayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian I think I might have "fouled" the preferences. When I've time, I'll try to find them, toss them and report back.

Preferences are usually per-user.
Thus it would only take a minute to check on the preferences hypothesis:
Create a fresh new user, use Fast User Switching to switch to that user, and then try playing the DVD.

[NovaScotian]

Quote: Originally Posted by hayne Preferences are usually per-user. Thus it would only take a minute to check on the preferences hypothesis: Create a fresh new user, use Fast User Switching to switch to that user, and then try playing the DVD.

I already have (always do this) an alter-ego set up. I've just enabled "Fast User Switching in Accounts as well, but darned if I know how to switch, short of logging out and back in again, which in my case isn't fast (a lot of stuff starts, AppleScripts run.... )

EDIT: The National is starting as I write this - more anon. Hayne will know what that is.

[hayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian I've just enabled "Fast User Switching in Accounts as well, but darned if I know how to switch

There should be a menu in the top right of your screen that allows you to switch users.
I don't use this since I don't like to have that menu there all the time. So I don't have FUS enabled in the Accounts prefs - instead I just use the command-line method that was mentioned in an article on the main macosxhints site.

[ttrtilley]

Fast User Switching puts the long user name in the menubar.
This can take up *way* too much screen space.
Making the long name shorter than the short name fixes this without
having to remove the FUS menu, or, [shudder], change the UID.
For example if your short name is jsmythe
and your long name is John Smythe,
change your long name to js

[NovaScotian]

Several comments about FUS:

1) The "cube" display rolled around to a blue screen and sat there for two minutes which is longer than it would have taken to log out and log in again as the other user. I held the power button for long enough to start again, came up in a different system (the original as delivered in another partition), ran a Disk Utility repair on the main partition (without any), and rebooted to it. That got me back to where I started. I've turned off FUS, pronto, have no intention of visiting it again.

2) FUS gives you a choice of using an icon instead of a long or short name and since you can change the icon to anything you like by dragging an image to the icon pane, you can make the images easy to distinguish at a glance. They don't take up much space (but, as I said, I don't care - FUS is permanently off my list).

3) To answer the original question: the movie works perfectly in my ghost account.

[hayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian The "cube" display rolled around to a blue screen and sat there for two minutes which is longer than it would have taken to log out and log in again as the other user.

That sounds like it might have been doing a lot of swapping out of the current user's apps before being able to log in the new user. Did you hear the disk running a lot? Were you doing things such that it is likely that most of your RAM would be in use? (Note that apps continue to run (taking CPU and RAM) in all user accounts when you use FUS.)

Or maybe it was just having trouble logging in to the new user's account due to some unrelated problem - e.g. filesystem corruption.

[hayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian To answer the original question: the movie works perfectly in my ghost account.

You have determined that the problem is only with the one user account.
The problem thus is almost certainly due to something under your home folder.
And it likely is something under ~/Library
( ~ = your home folder)
The most likely thing is a bad preference file under ~/Library/Preferences
You could start by removing the preference files for the apps you are having trouble with.
If the problem persists, you need to narrow the problem down - you could start by moving (via drag & drop) the whole "Preferences" folder that is under ~/Library to the Desktop, then log out and log in again. A default copy of the Preferences folder will have been recreated. Does that improve things? If so, you could use a divide & conquer approach to figure out which of the preference files is causing the problem - move half of the preference files back into the Preferences folder, log out & in again, etc.

If the problem persists, try the same thing with the other sub-folders of ~/Library. E.g. with ~/Library/Caches, ~/Library/InputManagers, ~/Library/Fonts, ~/Library/PreferencePanes, ~/Library/Application Support, ~/Library/Application Enhancers, contents of ~/Desktop, etc.
Also remove any files owned by your user in /Library/Caches (the Library folder at the top-level of the drive)

[NovaScotian]

Quote: Originally Posted by hayne That sounds like it might have been doing a lot of swapping out of the current user's apps before being able to log in the new user. Did you hear the disk running a lot? Were you doing things such that it is likely that most of your RAM would be in use? (Note that apps continue to run (taking CPU and RAM) in all user accounts when you use FUS.) Or maybe it was just having trouble logging in to the new user's account due to some unrelated problem - e.g. filesystem corruption.

To complete this sub-thread:
- I was not doing anything ram-intensive when I initiated the swap. iPulse had it at about 20%.
- The disk ran briskly for a minute or so, but then seemed to be quiescent for the last 30 - 40 seconds that I waited.
- I can log out of my regular account and into my ghost account without any hesitation or difficulty at all - that's how I know that the movie runs there.

Mystery unsolved, I guess; but of no great importance to me - it's easy enough to log out of one and into another account on my machine and I rarely visit the ghost account (to which no ~user stuff has ever been added).

[hayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian Mystery unsolved, I guess; but of no great importance to me - it's easy enough to log out of one and into another account on my machine

I wouldn't be satisfied with this. The problems you have experienced may well be mere symptoms of more serious problems that will bite you sometime down the road. If you continue using a system that has mysterious behaviour, at least make sure you have a good backup of all the files you care about - so you can do a bare-metal install if the system goes completely belly-up.

[NovaScotian]

Quote: Originally Posted by hayne You have determined that the problem is only with the one user account. The problem thus is almost certainly due to something under your home folder. And it likely is something under ~/Library ( ~ = your home folder) The most likely thing is a bad preference file under ~/Library/Preferences You could start by removing the preference files for the apps you are having trouble with. If the problem persists, you need to narrow the problem down - you could start by moving (via drag & drop) the whole "Preferences" folder that is under ~/Library to the Desktop, then log out and log in again. A default copy of the Preferences folder will have been recreated. Does that improve things? If so, you could use a divide & conquer approach to figure out which of the preference files is causing the problem - move half of the preference files back into the Preferences folder, log out & in again, etc. If the problem persists, try the same thing with the other sub-folders of ~/Library. E.g. with ~/Library/Caches, ~/Library/InputManagers, ~/Library/Fonts, ~/Library/PreferencePanes, ~/Library/Application Support, ~/Library/Application Enhancers, contents of ~/Desktop, etc. Also remove any files owned by your user in /Library/Caches (the Library folder at the top-level of the drive)

Removing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.DVDPlayer.plist was all it took.
there is still a cache that remembers that I had watched this before but I did not find and remove it.

Thanks, Hayne.

[NovaScotian]

Quote: Originally Posted by hayne I wouldn't be satisfied with this. The problems you have experienced may well be mere symptoms of more serious problems that will bite you sometime down the road. If you continue using a system that has mysterious behaviour, at least make sure you have a good backup of all the files you care about - so you can do a bare-metal install if the system goes completely belly-up.

I'm not either, really, but everything else functions perfectly as far as I can tell.

I back up the entire root partition two or three times a week to an external HD using CCC or SuperDuper (I have both).

When I set up the hard drive of this new Mac G5 with its 256M HD, I partitioned it, reloaded a virgin (but fully updated) system in to one partition, cloned my G3 to an external drive and then to another partition (my root volume), put classic and a bunch of archives on the others. Now I use the external as the backup of the root volume, but the key here is that the original virgin partition is always my fallback and from it, I can get at all the files on my backup.

Finally, what would pursuing whatever this problem is entail? I have no idea how to discover what causes that problem or whether the problem will even persist if I repair permissions, restart from my virgin system and verify my root volume (which I did earlier with no repairs). Perhaps I simply didn't wait long enough on the first go. It seemed to be taking much longer than just logging out and back in does, but perhaps that's only the first time.

Suggestions?

[hayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian Suggestions?

I can only suggest the standard troubleshooting steps:
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/ (see the "My Mac needs help" section)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...04011205473937
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/faqs.html

Also look for clues in the log files. Launch the "Console" application (under /Applications/Utilities) and look for relevant error messages. Note that messages are labeled with the date & time so you can use that to locate the part of the log to look at.

[NovaScotian]

Restart, Repair Permissions, use accounts prefs to set up FUS (which does not present correctly in the menu bar - sits directly on top of Bluetooth and Airport menus and disappears if clicked) - log out and in again - all well, icon appears properly, switching works perfectly. No need to pursue further. The problem seems to be with the presence of the Airport and Bluetooth menus at the right hand end of the menu bar, or that before using FUS you have to log out and in again. Thanks, Hayne

[NovaScotian]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian Restart, Repair Permissions, use accounts prefs to set up FUS (which does not present correctly in the menu bar - sits directly on top of Bluetooth and Airport menus and disappears if clicked) - log out and in again - all well, icon appears properly, switching works perfectly. No need to pursue further. The problem seems to be with the presence of the Airport and Bluetooth menus at the right hand end of the menu bar, or that before using FUS you have to log out and in again. Thanks, Hayne

Traced further - the menu difficulty is cause by the substitution of MenuCalendarClock (iCal Edition) in place of the normally displayed system clock. I've written to the developer.

[NovaScotian]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian Restart, Repair Permissions, use accounts prefs to set up FUS (which does not present correctly in the menu bar - sits directly on top of Bluetooth and Airport menus and disappears if clicked) - log out and in again - all well, icon appears properly, switching works perfectly. No need to pursue further. The problem seems to be with the presence of the Airport and Bluetooth menus at the right hand end of the menu bar, or that before using FUS you have to log out and in again. Thanks, Hayne

I have now discovered that the DVDPlayer gets totally confused if you start to watch a movie, stop it, Quit, and then return later. It gives you the choice to start where you left off, but it can't do it - the player hunts no matter what you choose. Stopping and then using the "eject" button on the player errors -47 and does not eject the DVD

Since the "previously viewed" status is not in Prefs (removing them doesn't alter the notification - it just loses which screen of the two I have I was watching on) it must elsewhere. Emptying the User's and System's Caches doesn't repair the problem.

Curious; but I'm increasingly convinced that the DVDPlayer is broken. I get to watch once, but not again, and not from where I left off. Defective.

[hayne]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian Since the "previously viewed" status is not in Prefs (removing them doesn't alter the notification - it just loses which screen of the two I have I was watching on) it must elsewhere.

If you really want to pursue this, you could find out what file gets written to by running the following command in a Terminal window while you do the DVD Player manipulation:

sudo fs_usage > ~/myoutput.txt

Beware that it may generate a lot of output, so keep it running for the minimum amount of time during which the operations happen.
Then open the file in a text editor and look for file access by DVD Player.