PlaybackException: ERROR (-4,0x80040217) (multiple video cards)

[jkoutrouba]

I am trying to set up a projector as a secondary monitor. Since I know that performance takes a huge hit when running Sage on secondary, I dropped an old 8MB Rage XL video card in to run as primary, and switched my Radeon 9600 to secondary. I figured this would allow me to dedicate all resources of the Radeon to playback on the secondary monitor. Unfortunately, when I try to watch live TV with the Radeon as the secondary, I get the following error:

There was a Playback Error in playback. Details: sage.PlaybackException: ERROR (-4,0x80040217): There was a problem rendering the video portion of the content for playback.

If I quit Sage and swap the monitors (making the Radeon primary) it works fine. It's only when the Radeon is secondary. There is one way to make it work, sort of. If I switch to "Default" video renderer (as opposed to Overlay or VMR9) it works, though it skips and stutters and gets blocky.

I really need to run the projector as secondary because if I don't and a dialog box pops up, I have to turn on the projector and look into my den to see what it is. Do I just need to get another fast video card or something? I was considering picking up a Radeon 9200 or something similar to use as the primary, leaving the 9600 as secondary. The only reason I think this might work is when the old Rage is primary, the option for hardware acceleration disappears from Sage (disabled is the only option). It's like Sage doesn't care what the capabilities of the monitor it's playing on are; it only cares about the capabilities of the primary monitor. If I had a newer primary, it seems like it would be willing to run using all of the acceleration from the VPU. I would also consider picking up something with a little more power, like a GeForce 5700 (has to be PCI, and that's the best one available that I know of) and then going primary with the Radeon and letting Sage run on the (even faster) secondary. Of course, by the time I do all that, I might as well just pick up a new CPU and have a dedicated HTPC, which would solve all of these problems...


-JK

[jkoutrouba]

I've been reading the beta forum, and see this a lot. It seems to be tied to quartz.dll problems there. I'm using 2.2.8, so there are no FSE issues, but I did just update J2RE. Could this be an issue? Seems like a long shot since everything works when the Radeon is primary...

[ToxMox]

I'm pretty sure trying to playback VMR9 to a non DirectX9 card like the 8MB Rage XL is your problem. I can't imagine trying to play back video from Sage on a card that old. You could buy a new vid card from a place with a good return policy and see if that fixes your problem. If it doesn't then just return it.

[ToxMox]

An alternative would be to get rid of the second video card and get some sort of external video splitter to send the same signal to both your monitor and projector.

[jkoutrouba]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

I'm pretty sure trying to playback VMR9 to a non DirectX9 card like the 8MB Rage XL is your problem. I can't imagine trying to play back video from Sage on a card that old. You could buy a new vid card from a place with a good return policy and see if that fixes your problem. If it doesn't then just return it.

That's not a bad idea. I know it will be a problem to play on the old card, but I set the old card up as primary and was playing Sage on the Radeon. That theoretically works great -- web browsing and other ordinary stuff on the old card and the demanding things on the new card. DVD playback works great, it's just live TV that blows up. I swear that Sage thinks it's running on the Rage card, not the Radeon. I have it set up to launch on the secondary monitor now, but the splash screen still comes up on the primary while its loading.

Is there a registry setting I can tweak to force certain applications to the secondary?


-JK

[jkoutrouba]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

An alternative would be to get rid of the second video card and get some sort of external video splitter to send the same signal to both your monitor and projector.

The only problem with that scheme is I lose the ability to have independent content/resolutions. I could just mirror everything. I suppose I will not be using the PC and projector simultaneously too much, so that could work. I can even set up girder to change the resolution when Sage starts up.

Hmmm...



-JK

[heffe2001]

Doesn't your 9600 have 2 outputs? Even if it's got 1 VGA and 1 DVI, you can get a DVI to VGA adapter, and use 2 monitors on one card that way. Kind of keeps you from putting that old card in the PC. I ran sage that way on my main desktop (albeit with a Nvidia 6600) for a long time, with one monitor on 1280x1024 and the other on 1024x768 without any problems at all (well, except for when games decided they wanted FSE, then the sage window would kind of screw up, not much you can do about that tho).

[jkoutrouba]

Originally Posted by heffe2001

Doesn't your 9600 have 2 outputs? Even if it's got 1 VGA and 1 DVI, you can get a DVI to VGA adapter, and use 2 monitors on one card that way. Kind of keeps you from putting that old card in the PC. I ran sage that way on my main desktop (albeit with a Nvidia 6600) for a long time, with one monitor on 1280x1024 and the other on 1024x768 without any problems at all.

The card has two outputs, but I still have to run Sage on the primary. When I run it on the secondary, it dogs the CPU. I put the second card in so that I could run it on secondary, but still have it access the full power of the on-board VPU. If it wasn't for the dialog box problem, I would be OK -- when I try to VPN into the network at the office, for example, the login dialog ALWAYS comes up on the primary, even if the client application is running on the secondary. That makes it impossible to see unless the projector is running and I'm in the den (CPU is in the office.)

Toxmox had a good idea with the mirroring thing, though. I could just mirror the desktop so that it wouldn't matter which was primary, and change the resolution when I want to use Sage. I wouldn't be able to work on the computer while someone else was watching TV, but that doesn't happen too often anyway. It might be a better way to avoid a new computer purchase.


-JK