AWE64 has no support for 48KHz sample rates that the DVDs use, they'll be software resampled to 44.1KHz and the process sounded horrible last time I tried. You'll maybe have luck by explicitly enabling audio downsampling in the player programs so that the awful driver resampling won't get used.

Tiido wrote:

AWE64 has no support for 48KHz sample rates that the DVDs use, they'll be software resampled to 44.1KHz and the process sounded horrible last time I tried. You'll maybe have luck by explicitly enabling audio downsampling in the player programs so that the awful driver resampling won't get used.

I am using the driver that came with win98se. Would updating driver make any difference? I could install a pci sound card for win98, but it would have to go between 2 voodoo2 cards and the case doesn't have very good cooling so I am worried about putting it there.

Baoran wrote:

Pentium 3 1000Mhz, Geforce 2 mx and awe64. Using win98se. Using old toshiba dvd-rom drive.
I tried both older win98 compatible version of VLC player and powerdvd XP.Not sure if this is hardware issue or software issue, but even if video seems to be fine there seems to be audio interference with both players. VLC has interference in the background when the powerdvd has interference in the sounds especially in speech in dvd movies. Any idea if the problem is with awe64 not being good enough or perhaps it has to do with dvd decoding itself?

Is the cpu usage really high or as expected low enough during deconding? The cpu should be capable to run dvd decoding even without any acceleration of the gpu like motion compensation.

386SX wrote:

Baoran wrote:

Pentium 3 1000Mhz, Geforce 2 mx and awe64. Using win98se. Using old toshiba dvd-rom drive.
I tried both older win98 compatible version of VLC player and powerdvd XP.Not sure if this is hardware issue or software issue, but even if video seems to be fine there seems to be audio interference with both players. VLC has interference in the background when the powerdvd has interference in the sounds especially in speech in dvd movies. Any idea if the problem is with awe64 not being good enough or perhaps it has to do with dvd decoding itself?

Is the cpu usage really high or as expected low enough during deconding? The cpu should be capable to run dvd decoding even without any acceleration of the gpu like motion compensation.

I don't think win98se can show cpu usage as far as I know.

When we had a Pentium III at home, ~ PowerDVD 3.x or XP was usually bundled with DVD-ROM drives.
These older versions should be able to make use of MMX/SSE or the old video decoders built into the then current graphics cards.
At the time, VLC was the worst DVD player software I knew. I encountered lots of artifacts and playback issues on commercial DVDs..

Edit: There also was WinDVD, I remember. For some reasons, thoiugh, PowerDVD worked better on our PC. Not sure why.

Jo22 wrote:

When we had a Pentium III at home, ~ PowerDVD 3.x or XP was usually bundled with DVD-ROM drives. These older versions should be […]
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When we had a Pentium III at home, ~ PowerDVD 3.x or XP was usually bundled with DVD-ROM drives.
These older versions should be able to make use of MMX/SSE or the old video decoders built into the then current graphics cards.
At the time, VLC was the worst DVD player software I knew. I encountered lots of artifacts and playback issues on commercial DVDs..

Edit: There also was WinDVD, I remember. For some reasons, thoiugh, PowerDVD worked better on our PC. Not sure why.

With the Voodoo3 basically only the cpu and the software player optimization was running having difficult time doing it without decreasing some quality. I remember a tool to tweak the final image/sound quality of each sw players to boost some speed in the decoding result, but for me the best was the hollywood+/dxr3 card.

Tiido wrote:

AWE64 has no support for 48KHz sample rates that the DVDs use, they'll be software resampled to 44.1KHz and the process sounded horrible last time I tried. You'll maybe have luck by explicitly enabling audio downsampling in the player programs so that the awful driver resampling won't get used.

Tiido is right.
I tried everything I could to get the 48->44.1kHz downsampling to work properly (in ffdshow, in ac3filter...) and it never worked right.
This is a real issue for me in Win98 and the reason why I installed an Audigy card with my AWE32 (and Gravis Ultrasound).

Now at least the DVD version of Wing Commander IV works perfectly and with lower CPU utilization.
Note, the AWE32 and GUS are disabled in Windows.

Baoran wrote:

I don't think win98se can show cpu usage as far as I know.

There are versions of SysInternals Process Explorer that can run on Windows 98 and can show CPU usage per process.

Perhaps I should install audigy to get it working and get eax support at the same time, but I am just worried about cooling of voodoo 2 cards with the no spaces between the cards.
Was there any geforce cards that helped with the dvd decoding?

386SX wrote:

With the Voodoo3 basically only the cpu and the software player optimization was running having difficult time doing it without […]
Show full quote

Jo22 wrote:

When we had a Pentium III at home, ~ PowerDVD 3.x or XP was usually bundled with DVD-ROM drives. These older versions should be […]
Show full quote

When we had a Pentium III at home, ~ PowerDVD 3.x or XP was usually bundled with DVD-ROM drives.
These older versions should be able to make use of MMX/SSE or the old video decoders built into the then current graphics cards.
At the time, VLC was the worst DVD player software I knew. I encountered lots of artifacts and playback issues on commercial DVDs..

Edit: There also was WinDVD, I remember. For some reasons, thoiugh, PowerDVD worked better on our PC. Not sure why.

With the Voodoo3 basically only the cpu and the software player optimization was running having difficult time doing it without
decreasing some quality. I remember a tool to tweak the final image/sound quality of each sw players to boost some speed in the decoding
result, but for me the best was the hollywood+/dxr3 card.

Thanks a lot for the information, I didn't know that. 😀

Baoran wrote:

Was there any geforce cards that helped with the dvd decoding?

I don't know, but I guess we had a Geforce 2MX or 4MX at the time. I only know for sure that it was an nvidia card.
However, I remember that there were standalone MPEG2 decoder cards (PCI) for DVD playback..
If memory serves, they had the same pass-trough technique as the Voodoo one and Voodoo two cards.
They also came with a special player software and/or a DVA (?) DLL for system wide MPEG2 support (Windows Media Player, games etc).
That being said, I never really looked into this in the Win98 era. It was shortly after we got XP, I believe, when I saw ads and magazine reviews about such cards.

Baoran wrote:

Was there any geforce cards that helped with the dvd decoding?

Yes, definitely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_256#Mot … on_compensation

Would newer geforce 4 or gerforce fx have dvd mpg decoding?

gdjacobs wrote:

Baoran wrote:

Was there any geforce cards that helped with the dvd decoding?

Yes, definitely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_256#Mot … on_compensation

Were you able to get it working in Windows 98?
I tried using PowerDVD and even with DVD Hardware Acceleration enabled, the CPU usage was still the same, very high.

tpowell.ca wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

Baoran wrote:

Was there any geforce cards that helped with the dvd decoding?

Yes, definitely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_256#Mot … on_compensation

Were you able to get it working in Windows 98?
I tried using PowerDVD and even with DVD Hardware Acceleration enabled, the CPU usage was still the same, very high.

I managed to make it work with media player classic V6.4.9.1. It's cpu usage is about 50% and setting option to downsample to 44100Hz fixed all audio issues I had.
Downsampling with VLC player didn't fix any audio issues with it, so I will be uninstalling it.
Powedvd works, but has sound issues with awe64 because I could not find option for downsampling and it's cpu usage is at 60% or so it has bit higher cpu usage than media player classic.

Did you try a newer ver of VLC with kernelex?

DosFreak wrote:

Did you try a newer ver of VLC with kernelex?

No, I don't really want to go to win2k/winxp software with this PC. I have faster PCs if I want to run newer stuff. I am pretty happy with that media player classic when it comes to playing DVDs.

Actually I am not sure I can use that system anymore. When I tested it last time there seems to be something wrong with it.
When I turned system off, it started making constant clicking sound that can be heard from headphones connected to the awe64 and keyboard and mouse lights are also flashing in same rhythm as the sound is clicking. System won't turn back on anymore.

Edit: Something wrong with the power supply most likely because there should be no power is ps/2 ports when the computer is off.

Dig up a copy of Software Cinemaster 99 or 2000. That works really well on 1998-1999 era hardware.

And by the way GeForce4 MX (not Ti IIRC) adds hardware iDCT processing. This brings NVidia up to the level of the Rage 128 and SiS 6326. I have a feeling it was finally added mainly to save battery power in notebooks.

This is a PSU that's constantly trying to power up but failing to do so. PSU itself is a problem or something connected to the PSU has shorted one (or more) of the rails.