Strange Windows video issue

[Ummon]

For a couple years, I've had this bizarro issue of my system not displaying video in WMP on the secondary output. I'm pretty sure it did very early on and then stopped at some point. So I turned the video acceleration down to the third notch, and now it does display. Of course, that buggers up directX - DD, D3D, etc.  Anybody understand what the deal might be?

[DJ_Izumi]

Video is generated faster using a hardware video overlay.  Basicly the desktop is only generating a near black color, not true black, in the video window.  The video stream is fed to the video card seperately and it mixes the overlay with the desktop view together before sending it to the monitor.  Most all graphics cards only have ONE overlay channel.  Depending on the OS and the hardware the overlay will only be on the primary display, so using hardware acceleration you'll just see black space on the secondary display.

On my system the overlay can switch between primary and secondary as the video window is dragged from one to the other, but I'm using extended desktop on a dual screen system.  If I put the video window between both screens, the overlay channel will only go to the side with 51% of the video window, the other portion on the other screen will be black.

Set your other monitor to be primary.

When you reduce video acceleration instead of an efficent video overlay your computer is directly rendering video to the desktop.  This consumes more resources and tends to introduce tearing to the video stream as well.

[DJ_Izumi]

**I QUOTED my own post rather than edited it and thusly double posted as a result.  AWESOME**

[Ummon]

Well, the desktop is in clone mode, but I only have one monitor on at a time, so I would think it would display to either one, depending on that. I swear it used to work this way, though I have a dim memory that it worked simultaneously. I can view MAME running on two monitors at the same time, desktop in clone mode.

[DJ_Izumi]

MAME isn't a video overlay.  It's a game.

Yeah in clone mode your video overlay will typically only go to the primary monitor.  Reverse which monitor is primary to get overlay on the other monitor.

[protokatie]

Due to the video overlay "problem" and the fact that WMP generally sucks, I usually use BS player for everything. Much more efficient (as far as I can tell) and doesnt seem to have the problem with my dual screen system that WMP has. Also, BSplayer's install will ask if you want new codecs to be DLed, and therefor can handle pretty much any video file I have ever run across.

@DJ, what player do you typically use? I can't imagine you using WMP, it isnt your style.

[Ummon]

MAME isn't a video overlay.  It's a game.

Yeah in clone mode your video overlay will typically only go to the primary monitor.  Reverse which monitor is primary to get overlay on the other monitor.

Oh I know. That's a hassle, though. Really, though, I swear it worked before. Anyways.....

Due to the video overlay "problem" and the fact that WMP generally sucks, I usually use BS player for everything. Much more efficient (as far as I can tell) and doesnt seem to have the problem with my dual screen system that WMP has. Also, BSplayer's install will ask if you want new codecs to be DLed, and therefor can handle pretty much any video file I have ever run across.

Yeah, I know, people always like to use something different than what's embedded. I can tend to like embedded systems, and early on actually tried a few out, but preferred WMP for various reasons, including interface and windowing issues (or lack of them in this case). But, yeah, there are some files it won't play, I think like mp4 and definitely ma4, so maybe I will go with something else.