Video not showing on TV

[reebokman]

Hi,

I'm still a trial user of STV and trying to evaluate as much as I can before I have to decide on whether I should purchase STV.

After changing some setting in the a/v section, the system has gotten faster and now uses down to 55% of my CPU. However, whenever I load SageTV now, there is no video on my TV (it's there on the PC). There is audio, but no video. Then, I just go into Setup and click "Reload Media Player" and the video comes on in the TV. This didn't happen before some of these changes I made. I went back and tried to reset to default settings, but still no luck :-/. Any ideas on what the problem may be?

Thanks for your help.

[Opus4]

My _guess_ would be a video card driver setting, since it sounds like you are using some sort of clone or theater mode to get video on both the monitor & TV, instead of just one of them.

- Andy

[reebokman]

My _guess_ would be a video card driver setting

That would be weird since I never messed w/ any drivers. Just settings within STV A/V Setup. Just to add this, I do see the STV Menus on the TV, just not the video in the background. If I want to watch a recording/livetv I can't see the video either. I see all the menus though. Weird that I have to click "Reload Media Settings" within STV to have it display properly.

[Opus4]

Having to use Reload Media Settings means I could be way off base here, but when using clone mode, the video Overlay is often not cloned. If you are using VMR9, then perhaps cloning isn't working correctly & a driver or DirectX update might solve it. Or, you may be better off just dropping clone/theater mode & just extending the Windows desktop to the TV as a second monitor, then setting it as the "primary" monitor in Windows' Display Properties if you wish to use 3D Acceleration in SageTV.

- Andy

[reebokman]

Thanks for your input Andy.

I'll try to mess with some video card settings and check for updates. It's just funny how it worked just fine until STV properties were changed. I'll just have to go through everything and then post any information I find. Thanks again.

[nielm]

if you changed video renderer, this might have cause it -- graphics cards handle Overlay and VMR9 in very different ways.
If you changed 3d accelleration settings, this can also switch between VMR9 and overlay

So, changing A/V things in detailed setup can affect your video playback...

Note that most video cards play back video best to the 'primary' display device -- so you may want to switch your TV out as the primary device in any case.

[reebokman]

I played around with the A/V properties within sage again. Though I didn't test setting the TV as primary (slipped my mind). I'll try that tonight. Here's what I tested and what I came up with:

1) Backed up and removed the properties file and started Sage. Sage was totally closed when removing the properties file.
- The settings stayed the same.

2) Changed Video setting to Overlay instead of VMR9. Reloaded media settings.
- No video.

3) Changed Video setting to Default instead of VMR9. Reloaded media settings.
- Video in the background, but no overlay of menus, obviously. Plus, all the menus just looked sh!tty.

4) Tried all the different decoders w/ VMR9.
- No video.

5) (this one is weird) Started STV w/ VMR9. I was using the FireFly mouse feature to close a few folders and then make STV the active screen. A few seconds later, the video and overlay worked all of a sudden.

6) I thought, maybe it's because there was a wait before I started using the player. So I loaded STV and then waited.
- No video.

I'll try setting the TV to primary. If that doesn't work, I'll be quite skeptical on purchasing STV :-(. Maybe there is a way to load STV and "Reload Media Settings" after the load so that I don't have to go back and click on that button again and again.

Just one option standing in my way of purchasing it. It's like you know you're almost there. I can smell the system that I want, now I just want to taste it.

I'll post new info tonight. Thank you!

[reebokman]

So I set the primary device for my card to be the TV and it show's the video on the TV and doesn't show it on the PC. However, it's still not overlay. Weird.

Another thing I keep noticing. If I load STV in full screen and some other app is also active, it'll keep showing the taskbar with the app. I then use the mouse functionality on FireFly and make STV active. Then I go to Recordings and all of a sudden overlay works. Pretty weird.

Question: Is there a way I can link the "Reload Media Settings" button to a command so that I can link that command in FireFly? This way I can just click on that when I'm ready to view the overlay mode? Thanks.