Any chance of a drive spin down timeout value?

[prg]

My HTPC spins down the drive after a pause of about 1.5 minutes (maybe 2). It would be nice if I could keep the disc spinning to prevent the ugly spinup judder after a long pause. Any chance of Anydvd HD supporting this in the near future? (or any way to get Windows to do this for me?)

[James]

Originally Posted by prg

My HTPC spins down the drive after a pause of about 1.5 minutes (maybe 2). It would be nice if I could keep the disc spinning to prevent the ugly spinup judder after a long pause. Any chance of Anydvd HD supporting this in the near future? (or any way to get Windows to do this for me?)

I have experimented changing the timers in the drive, but most drives seem to ignore this. So no, AnyDVD can't help.

[Roycal]

That speed issue is so outside the scope of AnyDVDHD, The faster your hardware is the better. There is no speed issues with AnyDVDHD.

Look at your O/S power saving settings and set them to "maximum performance;ie no power savings". It's your operating system (or the drive's controllers themselves) that is sleeping your drives. It has nothing to do with AnyDVD.

Edit , BTW what do mean by "Disc"? If its a hard drive it's ok to keep it spinning, but if it's a plastic disk, it's not good to leave it spinning unattended for hours

[prg]

I managed to solve the problem with a German product called CD-bremse, which was able to alter the spin down timer on my plextor bluray drive (but not my LG drive). The product has been discontinued, but testing shows it still works. Of course it would have been nice if the option was in anydvd The less support software the better, but meanwhile it works. So running at slowest speed (using anydvd hd) and highest spindown timer (using cd-bremse) eliminated the few seconds of stutter that would usually happen after i paused the movie long enough for the drive to spin down (30 seconds with the LG and 2 minutes with the Plextor).

And just a sidenote: Win7 power management does not allow for altering anything related to my optical drives (not using the GUI anyway)

[Roycal]

Glad that 'CD Bremse' is working for you somewhat. It is possible that AnyDVD could add a 'watchdog' that periodically refreshed the drive though, if they were so inclined and had enough requests. But it sounds more like a hardware issue not an AnyDVD problem

Besides all that, there could be a good reason the drive spins down on a long pause. If you start bypassing the parameters of the hardware drivers, you may find the drive does not last as long.

[prg]

Originally Posted by Roycal

Glad that 'CD Bremse' is working for you somewhat. It is possible that AnyDVD could add a 'watchdog' that periodically refreshed the drive though, if they were so inclined and had enough requests. But it sounds more like a hardware issue not an AnyDVD problem

Besides all that, there could be a good reason the drive spins down on a long pause. If you start bypassing the parameters of the hardware drivers, you may find the drive does not last as long.

I am aware of that, but CD bremse actually does not perform any trickery. It simply ups the timeout value of the drive, using a supported, builtin value. The default of 2 minutes seems to be imposed by Windows. CD Bremse will not change the timeout on my LG drive, probably because its a slim, slotload drive (mean for laptops), but works fine on the Plextor. Even if it means it breaks earlier than intended (and yes I read the many philosophical debates on what causes drive failure), it's still worth the money (to me). Only problem with CD Bremse is that I can't seem to get a hold of the author, so I can purchase a proper license

[Roycal]

Originally Posted by prg

I am aware of that, but CD bremse actually does not perform any trickery. It simply ups the timeout value of the drive, using a supported, builtin value. The default of 2 minutes seems to be imposed by Windows.

Actually, that 2 minutes is most likely imposed by the drive's hardware drivers and not controlled directly by Windows. And if you bypass those parameters, most likely you will compromise the life of the drive.

And you want to do this just so you can pause a drive for more than 2 minutes without a spin down? Curious on why you would want to do that in the fist place

[prg]

It was needed because movies played in PowerDVD experience a short period of jitter/stutter whatever you call it, if the drive spins up when you press play (I tried two different drives). This problem is not present using Media Player Classic - HC, but as I like the disc menus, that's not really an option. The 2 minutes annoyed me, because I want to be able to use the restroom, fix a sandwich or something similar, and still experience jitter free playback when I come back.

[Roycal]

Ok, I think I understand you now. You just don't want to see the jitter. One player may buffer the playback until the video is stable, and the other one may not.

I still don't think that is an AnyDVD problem though, it's either your hardware or your player software.

[prg]

Originally Posted by Roycal

Ok, I think I understand you now. You just don't want to see the jitter. One player may buffer the playback until the video is stable, and the other one may not.

I still don't think that is an AnyDVD problem though, it's either your hardware or your player software.

Wasn't looking to point fingers. I know it's not anydvds fault. I was just looking for a solution The problem is with PowerDVD (and the drives probably), but seeing as all player choices that support bluray menus (on Windows) are equally bugged, all in their own way, it's a question of finding the player with problems you can work around.