Zen Internet Support Forum

I've a VCD that I made (VCD version 2 with full PBC menues).

Testing it I find that sometimes the software player (or whatever?) keeps the motor spinning quite high, noisy, other times not.  Also, if a particular player (they all do it sometimes) is running the motor fast then switching to another player reduces the speed to 'normal' and switching back to the first player keeps it normal.  It appears to be random.

If that makes any sense?

Any one know why? and how to fix it so the drive never runs continually at, noisey, high (it's not full speed) speed (other than the solution given above).

I've never noticed this behaviour with CDs or DVDs (even one's I've made).

It's probably a setting in the player which is making it cache the data off the disk, take a look through the settings for the playback or read buffer and you might try reducing it however this may impact the performance of the player so it's well worth consulting the documentation first.

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David Nelson
Team Leader
Business Support Unit
Zen Internet

That was my initial thought; but it's not that.

All the players I use (VLC, PowerDVD, Media Player and Nero's thing [Showcase/Showtime or something like that) do it on occasion.

If I don't do anything the optical drive motor runs fast and noisy all the time until I do do something (like switching players), I've left it just to see what happens and it does not correct itself on of its own accord; it'd screw the drive after I while, I guess); it's not normal. Usually you can't hear the drive working (after all it's not doing much most of the time reading a VCD is not exactly taxing work).

It's only with this VCD; it's never done it with CDs or DVDs.

I'll have to make another VCD and see if it causes the optical drive to behave in the same way.