powerdvd 5 worse than powerdvd 4?

[emazur]

I just got a new system and tried powerdvd 5 and noticed I don't see any movies when using tv-out of my GEforce4mx(driver 6.13), so I immediately uninstalled and tried powerdvd 4 which worked great on my old system(same card), and works great on the new one too. Did they intentionally cripple powerdvd 5 or something? And it's not just DVD's, I tried some homemade vcd's too and they didn't work either with tv-out.

[Pyscrow]

Originally posted by emazur
Did they intentionally cripple powerdvd 5 or something?

Why not? they reduced the functionality when they went from V3 to V4 - the ability to play from the hard drive was stuffed up royally.(In my opinion anyway!)

[Ryokurin]

Im assumeing that your using 46.13 dets, and not 6.13.

Anyways, after dets 42.90 (I believe) Nvidia had to change the way that they call up tv out in their drivers to be completely compliant with Macrovision protection and a few other MS issues. The problem is that a good majority of nvidia cards use a specific conexant chipset for TV out that do not properly pass the macrovision information outside the card thus breaking TV out in some applications. PowerDVD 5 probably knows this and is thus killing TV out when its running.


Kind of getting off topic, but still on it, yes PowerDVD 5 blows compared to 4. It seems to be much more unstable, has issues with green glitches in svcds on my machines, and crashes on several files that 4 will play just fine. I still mess with it, but on the computer I use specifically for video it will not touch it until those things are fixed, which probably wont happen.

[emazur]

I recall reading something similar concerning the nvidia drivers, someone said these were kosher, but I guess he could be wrong. (when i check the driver version in display properties, it says 6.13, i guess that's an abbreviation).
I was disturbed yesterday to find that when I tried to run a homemade avi ripped from dvd, it wouldn't display on the tv when using powerdvd or other softs (though the dvd played on the tv OK). The hell if I know why. Previously I was using winme with the same card. To display tv out for anything, I had to manually select 'clone mode' and then it would display anything thrown at it. When I got my new system sunday, I found that when I selected 'clone mode' it would permanantly stay that way (how convenient I thought, but I wonder if that has any effect on my problems here).
In any case, I think i will uninstall the drivers now, it try the old drivers that came with the install cd and see how they work.

[emazur]

OK, I remember something I did when I had a laptop with tv out- in order to display video on the tv, i had to change the tv to the primary display. So I tried that here and it worked- besides dvd and vcd, I can play avi's on my tv. But unlike dvd and vcd, it's not cloned on both the monitor and tv (the monitor shows the software but blank video). So can someone recommend to me how to adjust my settings to play avi's on both displays? It was very easy back when I used ME: simply choose "clone" from nView and everything worked on both displays

[JaTeMaTec]

I do have Creative's (NVidia) GeForce4 Ti 4200 (AGP8X) with NVidia generic WHQL Drivers 6.14.10.5303 installed (Latest stable) and Nview display mode set to clone (PC Display 1400x1024 custom as Primary & TV as secondary with autopanning disabled and resolution set to 800x600).

At display properties 'Full Screen Video' settings secondary display is selected as 'Full Screen Device' and Zoom Control set to 'Video Mirror'. Hardware acceleration (@troubleshooting section) is full with 'Enable Write Combining' checked.

With these basic settings i'm able to play fullscreen video (AVI, MPEG1-2, DVD, (S)VCD ...) by default at TV (and at main screen at the same time) - even with PowerDVD 5 latest just to remember to go to 'Configuration / Video' and set HW-Acceleration on!

Here's what i get at Information Panel when playing back MPEG-2 SVCD format movie :


Player Information:
Player Region Code: Not Specified
Current Drive: K:
Title Region Code: Not Available

Display Information:
Video Mode: Weave
Display Mode: DirectDraw
FourCC Code: YUY2
Surface Type: Overlay

Video Attributes:
Video compression mode: MPEG-2
TV system: 625/50 (PAL)
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Display Mode: Both Pan&scan and Letterbox
Source picture resolution: 480x576 (625/50)
Frame Rate: 25.00
Source picture letterboxed: Not letterboxed
Bitrate: 2.26Mbps

Audio Attributes:
Audio Coding mode: MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 without extension bitstream
Sampling Rate: reserved = 2
Audio application mode: Not specified
Number of Audio channels: 2
Bitrate: 224 Kbps
Number of Audio streams: 1

Subpicture Attribute: Not Available

Hardware Information:
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2700+ running at 2172 MHz
3DNow! Technology: In Use
Enhanced 3DNow! Technology: In Use
3DNow! Professional Technology: In Use
IA MMX Technology: In Use
IA Streaming SIMD Extensions: In Use
IA SSE 2: Not Detected
Video Accelerator: DirectX VA (in use)
Multispeaker Audio Device: Creative SB Audigy (in use)
SPDIF Output Device: SB Audigy 2 Audio [D800] (not in use)


I think those shown attributes will tell the rest :)

JaTeMaTec

[emazur]

JaTeMaTec,
your suggestions worked, thank you very much (and thanks to the others who contributed). I didn't change my driver or anything, the only setting that seems to be necessary is that you have to change "full screen device" from disabled and put either the primary or 2ndary display instead. Now this is pretty good, but there's still something that irks me. When choosing 'full screen device' I will only see the video on the tv, but not the power dvd control panel or mouse pointer or other background crap. But it's useful to be able to see the interface b/c I turn off my monitor when watching on the tv, and if I adjust the volume level by my remote, I can't see what volume percentage it is on my tv, and I can't see how much time has passed in the movie and so on. But everything worked just like I wanted on my old WinMe system with the same card (basically, the display was identical for everything (including video) on both primary and secondary displays). Do you have a suggestion on how to set it up like that? A stop gap solution is to set my monitor as the full screen device instead of the tv, and then run the playback soft at full screen, but I'd really like to have it set up differently if possible.

[JaTeMaTec]

Select NView properties as DualView, then you actually do have two monitors that extend from one to the other (horizontally or vertically). Then you can drag the player to the secondary display with mouse visible and resize it to fulscreen at TV side (f.e. by dblclicking the caption).

Also at Display Properties main screen you see monitors #1 & #2 (and monitor #2 is dimmed by default - not attached). Now just right click the dimmed monitor #2 and set it to Attached and at the lower combo box adjust it's resolution & color depth to suitable and then drag it with mouse over the monitor #1 to left, up or wherever you want it to extend...
Now you can use them as you like - with mirroring or just extending (from NVidia controls)...

That's how you are able to watch video interfaced and seeing all the controls, OSD, time elapsed etc with losing just a bit of area when compared to Full Screen Mirror...

This is how i put them when i need to use my remote control when lazy laying on my sofa watching something 'nize' :)
(with PC monitor turnrd off)

JaTeMaTec

[emazur]

Thanks again for your reply. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but I'm still not satisfied:
method 1) though useful for movies, in other situations I have no use or desire to use an extended desktop.

method 2) setting monitor 2 as "attached" and clicking OK gives me a worthless picture of my desktop wallpaper, and no windows, interface, etc. I see that I can drag windows and such over there, but again, that seems pretty much the same as an extended desktop to me, which I have no use for in general.

If there is some method to make an exact mirror after enabling one of these 2 methods, I'm not seeing it. But I very much appreciate your effort. It's just that things were perfect on my old system so I'm a little frustrated now.
:scared:

[b00zed]

Originally posted by Ryokurin
Im assumeing that your using 46.13 dets, and not 6.13.

The popularly cited numbers (ie wx.yz) for the detonator/forceware drivers are the last four digits of the full version number (r.st.uv.wxyz). I suspect that when he says 6.13 he means r.st, not x.yz.

It looks like the forceware drivers (5x.yz) begin with 6.14, so I guess that 6.13 was the prefix for the 4x.yz series detonator drivers...

Could you give the whole version number string emazur?

[emazur]

sure, it says:
6.13.10.4072

the file is called:
NVIDIA_(XP)_4072_WINXP_WHQL.EXE

[JaTeMaTec]

OK - if that's what you need:

In NView Setting "Clone" when you leave autopanning on (unchecked) You simply do have 2 cloned exact monitors. Now just do NOT select any fulscreen or mirror things at NVidia settings or at the Player!!

If cloned monitor #2 (TV) does have smaller resolution (800x600) vs. main (1024x768), moving mouse at TV just pans the desktop aka when you move mouse to right corner, it will scroll to the dimensions of #1 (main) monitor and the left side disappears (same thing vertically)...

You can now launch the player and just resize it as 800x600 to top left corner of the primary display and voila - it will fill the screen at TV showing you all the controls and letting to move mouse visible at TV and do exact same things as at main display (and of course visible at PC monitor too at same time)...

Some display cards does allow TV-resolution to be set to 1024x768 and when you do have the same resolution at PC desktop then it's full cloned - no panning seen and that's what you want i quess.

P.S. You should use WHQL-drivers 6.14.10.5303 aka NVidia Drivers version 53.03 to get these same menus as i and also use the "Coolbits+" to get more info & functions visible to settings (Easy overclocking, custom display modes, 'Render no more than X frames ahead...',Performance Graph etc...

it contains these lines (Just copy/paste to Coolbits.reg and dblclick):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak]
"Coolbits"=dword:ffffffff
"NvCplEnableAGPSettingsPage"=dword:00000001
"NvCplEnableAdditionalInfoPage"=dword:00000001
"NvCplEnableClearViewPage"=dword:00000001


/edit: or 'Windows Registry Editor Version 4.00' at 9xME like this:


Windows Registry Editor Version 4.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak]
"Coolbits"=dword:ffffffff
"NvCplEnableAGPSettingsPage"=dword:00000001
"NvCplEnableAdditionalInfoPage"=dword:00000001
"NvCplEnableClearViewPage"=dword:00000001



JaTeMaTec

[emazur]

Well I'm pleased to say that when I tried the new driver, all I had to do to was select clone and everything was like I wanted. Thank you. I was hesitant to try to the new driver b/c of what I've read about nvidia's macrovision in the new drivers which would cripple tv out, but it gives me absolutely no problems. So if it works perfectly, what, if anything, is there to complain about?

I will try the resolution adjustment of monitor 2 as your recommendation, as well as coolbits sometime this week. I'm happy in the meantime though.

May I ask what software you think is best for movie playback? I think I'll probably go with powerDVD for all movie playback (dvd,vcd,avi). I own it legit for one, and secondly my remote control is automatically configured for it. And do you use any software like reclock to prevent tearing/vsync of motion video? I haven't tested my new system much yet, but I had this problem on my old system. I tried reclock but couldn't seem to get it to work right (don't recall the details). and do you use tv tool?

[JaTeMaTec]

No ReClock - No TVTool (the later mixed up all my settings and i began to hate it:) !).

I think all that's needed is now at latest NVidia's bundle and if using NView Desktop Management in addition - that's how i get the most outta my Display Card: Main Monitor, TV and Virtual Desktop(s) which can all have their own resolutions and even refresh rates
(I have DTP #1 with 1400x1024 Custom @ 75 Hz and DTP #2 with 1600x1200 @ 60 Hz with TV cloned outta DTP #1 with autopanning).

Just have to keep the icons in order aka not putting anything at bottom and rightmost areas at the 1600 DTP or they go mixed when restoring to 1400 one..
(I do use EzDesk IconSaver and it's hex of a good app to remember all possible resolutions for saving and restoring icons especially when having lots of them at DTP [as i do have...] )

Hmmm ..Player - I have had some unsuccess with (S)VCD's with PowerDVD 5.x (can only play it as browsing to CD's Directory, where the movie is saved and not always getting the right dimensions) but no such problems with Intervideo's WinDVD v5.1 which i own and do have the AudioBooster module installed. It regognizes the (S)VCD's as easily as DVD's aka as whole module with menus and functions (and with booster and playlists it's a good MP3 player too...)

Easiest and most cheap (=no money) way is to use Media Player Classic (MPC), which can really play all possible formats of Video, Audio, DVD's, (S)VCD's whatever comes in mind and can be filtered to play with DX-Acceleration or not... - I am not sure, whether Gabest would have / intend to make a remote interface into it, but we can always hope :)

P.S. That NVidia's multivirtual desktop implementation is really fine and at this latest driver it won't consume much of memory anymore as it used to..
(with shortkeys like Alt+1 and Alt+2 it's easy to switch monitors #1 & #2 to make some job while video is playing at TV mirrored with DTP #1, throw windows from one DTP to another, use mouse gestures, minimize screens to have only caption visible etc etc... (i like that)!

JaTeMaTec