CD-ROM & DVD drive optimization tips
Last Updated on February 09, 2000 by Thomas McGuire

Yes, you can actually enhance your CD-ROM/ DVD/ CD-writer performance quite a bit. You can particularly improve DVD playback a good bit.

Drivers

Download & install the latest drivers/firmware updates for your drive then & update as appropriate. Go to DriversHQ for links to manufacturers.
NOTE – Some driver updates may be DOS drivers, in which case you won’t need them unless you use that drive a lot in DOS.

General

First go into "System properties" (Right click on My Computer, select Properties) & select the "Device manager" tab. Click on the + sign next to "CD-ROM" & double click on your CD-ROM (or DVD, etc.).

Next, go back into System Properties click on the Settings tab & put a tick in the DMA box. DMA increases the drive access speed, as a result this should speed up your drive, if you experience any trouble afterwards, just simply go back & untick the DMA box to disable it.

Also tick the Sync data transfer box. Again, if you experience any trouble afterwards, just simply go back & untick the box to disable it.

Tick/untick Auto insert notification at your own discretion. Leaving it ticked will allow say, the autoplay of audio CD’s. Unticking it will disable this & other options such as auto-install on some games and applications when inserted.

Restart the PC for the change to take effect.

Next, go into "System properties" once more. Select the "Performance" tab, and "File system".

Click on the "CD-ROM" tab. Slide the slider all the way to the right, & select Quad-speed or higher for "Optimize access pattern for". You should use this setting even if you have slower than a quad-speed CD-ROM for better performance.

Click on Ok then. Reboot as necessary.

This file will increase your CD-ROM's cache, thus increasing its performance.

CD-Quick cache

For the more hardcore people out there, particularly those with CD-writers & DVD drives. CD-Quick cache may be more suitable for you. With this program you “Can use up to 64MB of RAM or 512MB of hard disk for a CD-ROM cache”. This amount can be changed as you see fit.

While it does actually work (& work very well at that) it may not be of too much benefit to people that mainly game on the PC or those where the CD usage is minimal (playing audio CD’s doesn’t count), the $29 price for registering may also turn you off it.

NOTE – You can use either RAM or the Disk for the caching purposes, but not both.

Set the Disk cache to 32MB or so (depending on usage you may need more, or less). Unless you have over 128MB RAM I wouldn’t recommend using the RAM for caching. Although this may depend on whether or not you use the PC for other RAM intensive applications, such as games, or multimedia editing, like Adobe Photoshop. Seeing as the RAM is faster you may not need to set it quite as high as the Disk cache.

DVD tweaking

For those out there with DVD drives that play DVD movies (no laughing) I suggest downloading DVD Genie. This will allow you to select some advanced options in software DVD players such as WinDVD or Cinemaster as well as change the regional settings on the players (for those with region unlocked drivers). The version used in this guide is 3.29.

I use Software Cinemaster99 as my DVD player (as it’s the best, in my opinion). As you can see this allows for far more customisation than is allowed via the Control Panel options. Select your own DVD player & choose which options to use as you see fit. The settings pictured below give me the best quality image/sound for my machine.

Although the settings below are based on the Cinemaster player they can be applied to the other players if selectable.

Select Region – Select the region of your chosen DVD.

Decode setting – If you have any of the cards mentioned in the drop down menu, choose that, otherwise choose Full quality (CPU). If you have a Pentium 3 you can select Katami enhanced full quality (CPU).

Sample rate – Choose the playback frequency. 48,000Hz being the best quality. Use this if you have a good soundcard & fast CPU. Select 44100Hz if you have an older soundcard, such as an AWE64. Only choose 22050Hz if you’re desperate for a performance increase, albeit with a loss of sound quality.

Deinterlacing – Choose Force weave for best quality, if unsure select Smart detect.

Enable hardware optimisation – Only untick this for trouble shooting purposes only.

Enable 3:2 pulldown reconstruction – Tick this for smoother playback.

Apply settings retroactively – Tick this to apply settings to previous versions of the Cinemaster engine.

Apply only region setting – Only Tick this if you only want to change the region setting.

Extra settings (click on More options)

Surface flip mode – Controls in non-hardware assisted cases how the multiple buffering of decoder surfaces is handled. Select Soft De-interlace for the best quality if you meet the 400Mhz+ CPU & 4MB+ graphics card requirement.

Surface Flip Position – Similar to the above setting, select your video if shown, e.g. Voodoo3 owners should select Bottom of the overlay.

Sound Compression Mode – Select Normal. The default is Compressed & does not yield the best quality sound.

AC3 downsample mode – Leave it at the Default setting, which is Filter #5. Changing to a lower setting will free up some resources but reduce sound quality.

AC3 SP/DIF out mode – Select the use of any SP/DIF module. Select your soundcard if applicable or choose Disabled.

Dynamic Audio Range Compensation - Selects dynamic ranges in Dolby Digital (AC-3) decoding. Setting both sliders to 0 will give the best quality sound.

Dialog Normalization – Keeps the average dialog level of an audio stream at a constant dB level when checked.

Enforce flip sync – Untick this setting unless you experience image tearing or flickering. This may fix it.

Intel 740 page flipping – If you have an i740 card tick this, otherwise untick it.

Triple buffering – Tick this for smoother playback.

DVD Max – If you have a G400 tick it, otherwise untick it.

3d Audio – Tick this to enable 3d audio. Untick to disable.

Use LFE decoding – Used with high quality speakers this will give a more dynamic sound. On low quality speakers it could damage them.

Pro-Logic Sound - Selecting this provides support for Pro-Logic amplifiers. Untick this if you have no Pro-Logic decoder.

Enable SP/DIF – Tick it to enable SP/DIF output. Untick to disable.

The other available settings may be required by some cards for correct playback. If unsure & playback if ok leave them at their default setting, unticked.

Finally select Apply to apply the changes you have made.

Trouble-shooting

Some games that play movies from the CD drive (such as Tiberian Sun) can improve playback by lowering the read-ahead cache size. If you find that movie/audio playback is stuttering you should try doing so.

For optimal performance do not use any DOS CD-ROM drivers. Remove such references from the config.sys/autoexec.bat file. These are only needed in DOS mode.

Conclusion