avih
10th February 2008, 11:41
Ok, this is an issue that bothers me for a while now. After some time of using the computer (could be hours or days or weeks, my window is usually up at least 2-3 weeks between reboots), Overlay stops working. I get no error but instead of video overlay I get a black window. Rarely it comes back, but it did come back, at least once or twice (out of many many times that it happened). Untill it stops working, everything works fine, including all the apps described below.
I'm using an FX5600U card with dual monitor setup (main is LCD, secondary is CRT) on XP SP1 with recent NVIDIA driver (with shitty "stand alone" panel instead of the one embedded into the display properties dialog). Directx is 9.0c. Forceware version is 163.71 but it happened with earlier drivers too.
The related applications that I use with overlay are DScaler, MPC, VLC, mplayer (via MPUI usually). I also run few 3D games. The rest is pretty standard "office/internat" usage (sans ms office) with firefox etc.
Interesting note: If I set (through the NVidia panel) that when video is playing, the secondary screen shows the video full screen, then the secondary screen shows the video even when it's black video window on the main screen. After a reboot on that configuration, both displays show the video properly.
Since it bothers me, I changed the output methods of some of my players as follows, to avoid the issue as much as possible.
MPC: output set to VMR 7. Isn't affected anymore.
VLC: output set to OpenGL. Isn't affected anymore.
MPUI: output set to directx:noaccel. Isn't affected but ugly scaling and more CPU I think.
essentially, as far as i understand, the above 3 apps don't use "plain" overlay anymore so i think they're not triggering this issue.
DScaler: couldn't find a way to solve. Output can use or not use overlay but regardless, it shows a black window. DScaler is the main motivation to find a solution since I couldn't find a bypass for this problem for it. I'm suspecting it might also be the cause but i don't have a proof for it.
My questions:
1. Is there a different output method for DScaler that I've missed?
2. Is there a way to "reset" overlay output of the driver? My suspicion is that it's a driver bug triggered by something in dscaler. However I can't be sure of that and different drivers exhibit the same behavior.
3. has anyone had similar issues? Is the cause known? was a solution found?
thanks in advance
avih
[edit]
Almost positive that it's unrelated, but it still does "stuff" with the display, forgoto to mention that I also use this PC as a VNC server that I sometimes access from work. It's hooked to the display, initially "normaly" and later with the "mirage" mirror driver. Changing the hook driver didn't affect this issue. As far as i remember, the issue was there also before I started using the VNC server on that PC.
I'm using an FX5600U card with dual monitor setup (main is LCD, secondary is CRT) on XP SP1 with recent NVIDIA driver (with shitty "stand alone" panel instead of the one embedded into the display properties dialog). Directx is 9.0c. Forceware version is 163.71 but it happened with earlier drivers too.
The related applications that I use with overlay are DScaler, MPC, VLC, mplayer (via MPUI usually). I also run few 3D games. The rest is pretty standard "office/internat" usage (sans ms office) with firefox etc.
Interesting note: If I set (through the NVidia panel) that when video is playing, the secondary screen shows the video full screen, then the secondary screen shows the video even when it's black video window on the main screen. After a reboot on that configuration, both displays show the video properly.
Since it bothers me, I changed the output methods of some of my players as follows, to avoid the issue as much as possible.
MPC: output set to VMR 7. Isn't affected anymore.
VLC: output set to OpenGL. Isn't affected anymore.
MPUI: output set to directx:noaccel. Isn't affected but ugly scaling and more CPU I think.
essentially, as far as i understand, the above 3 apps don't use "plain" overlay anymore so i think they're not triggering this issue.
DScaler: couldn't find a way to solve. Output can use or not use overlay but regardless, it shows a black window. DScaler is the main motivation to find a solution since I couldn't find a bypass for this problem for it. I'm suspecting it might also be the cause but i don't have a proof for it.
My questions:
1. Is there a different output method for DScaler that I've missed?
2. Is there a way to "reset" overlay output of the driver? My suspicion is that it's a driver bug triggered by something in dscaler. However I can't be sure of that and different drivers exhibit the same behavior.
3. has anyone had similar issues? Is the cause known? was a solution found?
thanks in advance
avih
[edit]
Almost positive that it's unrelated, but it still does "stuff" with the display, forgoto to mention that I also use this PC as a VNC server that I sometimes access from work. It's hooked to the display, initially "normaly" and later with the "mirage" mirror driver. Changing the hook driver didn't affect this issue. As far as i remember, the issue was there also before I started using the VNC server on that PC.