Overlay in .14

[TunaBoo]

I have a GF4 4200 and sage beta .14

I canNOT get overlay to work on my second monitor, only on my first (I watch it on my second monitor, if it doesn't work there it is useless to me.) I have the newest video card drivers, and mpeg2 decoder drivers.

VRM9 bogs my CPU down to 80% (Even though I have a fast CPU), and makes the rest of my system too slow to use, so that is out.

Any ideas? Overlay worked fine on either monitor back in .13 and before.

[malore]

I'm not having any problems with my Geforce 4mx 420 using the cyberlink mpeg decoders. If you have more than one mpeg2 decoder have you tried a different one? What decoder isn't working?

[insomniac]

ditto...but vmr does seem to work sufficient in my gf4 mx client.

overlay is just a complete no-go now...

I.

Originally posted by TunaBoo
I have a GF4 4200 and sage beta .14

I canNOT get overlay to work on my second monitor, only on my first (I watch it on my second monitor, if it doesn't work there it is useless to me.) I have the newest video card drivers, and mpeg2 decoder drivers.

VRM9 bogs my CPU down to 80% (Even though I have a fast CPU), and makes the rest of my system too slow to use, so that is out.

Any ideas? Overlay worked fine on either monitor back in .13 and before.

[DFA]

If I'm not mistaken, with ATI or any card manufacturer I assume, overlay will only work on one monitor at a time. That is true for ATI. I'd like to get overlay output on the SVideo out and the DVI out at the same time but it can't be done and ATI says so. I can get the desktop out on more than one monitor, but not overlay. Check your manual. I do not believe this is a Sage issue.

If using VMR, that is a different story and one of the reasons I hope to use it in the future when I can cure my tearing problems which is common complaint.

DFA

[GbrNole]

overlay only works on one monitor at a time period it's the nature of the beast.

[TunaBoo]

I only want overlay on one monitor. It worked perfect in .13, but not in .14. In 13 I could drag sage between monitors, and it would "turn off" overlay on screen A, and "turn on" overlay on screen B, and vice versa.


Where can I get other decoders like cyberlink? I have powerDVD and winDVD installed but all that shows up under mpeg decoders for me is intervideo and intervideo nonCSS for hauupage.

Also, the font smoothing built into XP seems to make the menus blur at times in SAGE TV. That is some buggage.

[gplasky]

Overlay will only work on your Primary monitor. You need to make your TV your Primary monitor if you want to see overlay on it.

Gerry

[Opus4]

Originally posted by gplasky
Overlay will only work on your Primary monitor. You need to make your TV your Primary monitor if you want to see overlay on it.

Are you sure about that? On my client, I can drag the window back & forth between the main & secondary monitor on my dualhead GeForce4 Ti 4200 (52.16 drivers) with the video playing as the background behind the menus & it works fine on either monitor, switching itself as needed.

- Andy

[falchulk]

Historically, overlay has been restricted to the primary monitor. DO a search on primary to confirm this.

[Opus4]

Originally posted by falchulk
Historically, overlay has been restricted to the primary monitor.

OK, but does that mean that "primary monitor only" issue doesn't apply any more, since I can run it on both monitors, or is there somethign else going on? Whether set to default, overlay, or VMR9, the appearance/function is the same. I saw in another thread a comment that vmr9 will switch back to overlay automatically if it doesn't work correctly... so I suppose all 3 of those settings are actually using overlay on my client.

- Andy

[gplasky]

Maybe this might explain it:
From nVidia manual for 52.16 drivers

Full-Screen Video Options
Note: Video Mirror features are not available under Windows NT 4.0.
The Video Mirror feature is supported by any NVIDIA GPU-based multidisplay
graphics card.
The Video Mirror feature allows a video or DVD application to mirror its
playback in full-screen mode on any one of the connected display devices.
Note: The Video Mirror features are supported only under nView Clone and
Dualview modes. Also note that if you have only one display device
connected to your computer, you will not have Video Mirror
functionality but will be able to access the other Overlay Control features.

Gerry

[Opus4]

I don't know if that applies to me, since I'm not always using full screen & mirroring _seems_ to indicate to me an output on a 2nd location. (Yes, I could easily be misunderstanding that.) Also, the nVidia properties tab shows the "Full screen device" as "Disable".

I just know I can drag the window to either monitor & show it windowed or full screen & the video plays in the background either way. Why? In don't know. I can write a game that uses DirectX: full screen, windowed, double/triple buffered & all that good stuff... but I've never studied overlay or VMR9.

- Andy

[TunaBoo]

So it lets you go between monitors? I can't anymore with overlay (I can with VRM, but VRM uses 100% of my CPU and is choppy).

[Opus4]

Originally posted by TunaBoo
So it lets you go between monitors?

Yes -- full screen or windowed. While windowed, I can drag it from one monitor to another & the video switches when it gets more than halfway moved to the other screen -- which is the way it has always worked for me. It sounds like we have a very similar, if not the same, video card.

I am using Video Renderer set to Overlay; Decoder Filter set to Default (but my only other choice is Cyberlink Video/SP Decoder); 3D Acceleration: enabled; Overlay Color Keying: enabled. Is there anything else of importance? Oh: nView is set to Dualview.

I don't understand the 'overlay only on the primary monitor' comments above, unless that overlay restriction is gone, or I'm not really using overlay. Would the menus still be visible w/transparency over the background video if it weren't using overlay?

- Andy

[TunaBoo]

I got it working. I had to install cyberDVD and use their codec. VERY nice PQ, and low (30%) cpu usage.

[Maladin]

You cannot create an overlay on the secondary monitor. This is a bug in DX which Microsoft refuses to fix because they are pushing VMR to replace overlay.

[Opus4]

Originally posted by Maladin
You cannot create an overlay on the secondary monitor.

OK... so this is something I'm still trying to understand.

1) Does SageTV use something other than either VMR9 or overlay, especially for using the video as the menu background? If so, that explains it appears to work for me; if not, whether overlay works on a secondary display could be video card/driver specific.

2) I've googled this & saw various comments regarding overlay working on any display, but on only 1 at a time. That is what I expected.

Thanks for any comments clearing this up. (Yes, I know it isn't that important, since _something_ is on my secondary monitor... you have all simply gotten me curious about what is happening.)

- Andy

[falchulk]

Opus4, I dont know what to say. Your system is suer or something! Do you have an app that changes the primary display setting automatically?

[Opus4]

Originally posted by falchulk
Do you have an app that changes the primary display setting automatically?

Not that I know of. Besides, I think that would make other noticeable changes to my system.

So... continuing to show my ignorance on this matter... How else would SageTV be playing on a secondary monitor? Isn't it a fairly common thing for people to hook up their TV as a secondary monitor & then simply drag the SageTV window to that display & go full screen? That's all I've done on my client since I bought it last year.

- Andy

[TunaBoo]

I am sure the video card drivers fix the MS bugs. Nvidia drivers are usually awesome, so it doesn't suprise me that overlay works on either monitor.