strange_complex | Techy help needed, please!

I can take screen-caps using the DVD player on my computer, but in order to do so, I have to disable something called 'hardware motion compensation'. This means that whenever I think "Ooh, must get a screen-cap of that!", the thought is almost always followed by "Ah, but I'd have to do that disabling thingy, wouldn't I? Gah, maybe I don't really need that screen-cap after all."

What I'd like to know, therefore, is how important hardware motion compensation actually is, and whether I could get away with just leaving it off all the time? Can anyone advise?

BTW, my computer is a desktop, and I never move it around anywhere. If that even has anything to do with hardware motion compensation...

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From:

qatsi.livejournal.com

This might be useful (http://dvdvideo.co.nz/dvd_terms.htm). It seems that hardware motion compensation gives you smoother playback - which is generally desirable, but if you're looking manually to capture a particular frame, it's more difficult because the picture would have moved on by the time you see the required image. So turning it off makes sense for screencaps, but might be a Bad Thing for general playback. You'd have to try it and see whether you notice much difference.

From:

strange-complex.livejournal.com

So do I understand that hardware motion compensation is something that's relevant only to playing DVDs, and won't affect any other aspect of the performance of my computer?

If so, I may well just turn it off permanently, as I have a separate DVD player now, so will mainly just be using the one on my computer for capturing images, and perhaps occasionally running software.

Thanks for the help!

From:

strange-complex.livejournal.com

Update - I've disabled it, which it turns out can be done from within the DVD software itself (strongly suggesting that it is specific to the DVD player only), and everything seems to be running fine, including the DVDs I've tried playing. So I think I'll just leave it off from now on.

Thanks!

From:

neilh.livejournal.com

Yeah, it should be ok if your computer is fast enough....you might find you've got interlacing problems with the screencaps, too (horizontal stripy effect in captured images when things are moving across the screen), if thats a problem there might be a de-interlace option somewhere, which might help.

From:

strange-complex.livejournal.com

My caps are stripe-free, so I think I'm OK on the interlacing front. Thanks, though.

From:

neilh.livejournal.com

Yes, you're probably OK, but it depends upon the disk encoding, so you might find that some cause problems....most likely if you try captures from foreign disks, since different areas tend to use different encoding schemes - its not quite tied to regions but that would be a good indicator of a disk coming from elsewhere....I found a bunch of disks I picked up in Japan were encoded with different codecs, mostly leading me to have problems with sound rather than pictures, but the interlace coding on some of them was different.