dualview - how to play a game + watch a video

[zaxtorrent]

Dear forumers!

A usual setup for me is that I play some PC Game and my girlfriend watches some movie.
I have a 8800 GT a Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW, and a Samsung LCD TV with analog connection available.

So what i would like to achieve now, I had been doing for the past year no problem before i reinstalled windows!
I was able to play WoW or CIV IV or whatever PC game full screen on my monitor, while I was able to watch a .avi or whatever video file on the TV simultaneously.

Since I had reinstalled win, I can't do the same!

after I start the movie and then i start the PC game, the movie either freezes or the tv screen goes blank
then if I shut down the pc game the movie continues.

I have the exact same hardver setup now as before, same videocard + monitor + LCD TV.

I suspect the problem comes from either the driver or some wrong setup issue because these are the only things that changed after the winreinstall.

Any ideas guys?

Do I need some specific driver?
Should I retry some 1 year old ones?
Should I get some appllication to help me?
btw what I want, the simultanous pc game + video is it even officially possible?

pls help me, ms GF is killing me!:))

[Suspishio]

It strikes me as a clear driver issue. I don't know if you installed latest drivers from Nvidia or Amsung.

Tell us please.

[zaxtorrent]

its the same with the newest driver, a one year old driver and with the alternativ omega driver

[Suspishio]

It certainly is "officially possible". The issue is purely bandwidth which is governed by CPU power, Video RAM and 8800GT performance.

So what else is running or grabbing memory, possibly causing paging which will definitely have a negative effect.

[zaxtorrent]

i have a pretty strong config core2duo E8400 @3G + 2 G RAM

and i repeat same config it worked before

two interesting things
1
when it worked before i used vlc media player fullscreening on the lcd TV (nr 2 display)
now I have some version of it also but this one when i put the movie to nr 2 and want to full screen puts the fullscreen back to the monitor (display 1)
other players dont do it i e media player classic fullscreens on the tv fine

2
when i randomly changed resolutions on the tv (it has max 1360*768) and i tried 800*600 windows media player kept on playing PART SIZE of the movie while i fired a game up
it was only like 1/8 random part of the screen the movie scaled down
to it like it was a software crash, the frame of the player remained rest of the picture was blank

when i quit the game the movie came scaling up filling the frame normally

i dunno if these have anything to do with anything:)

i still dont know why the same clickings dont do the job as before

[Suspishio]

Maybe you should re-install vlc (latest version 0.98a). The full-screen behaviour is not normal.

When I ran it on XP PRO SP3, no problems with full screen. But if I started on nr 1 display and dragged it to nr 2 display, the image would disappear until re-started.

Anyway, what you describe in #2 sounds like the 8800GT settings need tweaking somewhat. They're stored in the registry which didn't survive a re-install of Windows.

BTW, Vista behaved better with vlc and no problems dragging across screens.

[zaxtorrent]

first thx for trying to help Suspishio!

what do you mean by tweaking? how?

and of course i didnt tweak nothing on the former system..:(

[zaxtorrent]

if i run win media player

there is a slidebar in options/performance

it has 3 options for hardware acceleration

if I choose full, then start a video and a game on #1 display, the video goes blank on the tv

if I choose the middle option the same blank happens

however if I choose none, then happens what I described above!
the movie changes to a smaller scale while winmedia frame remains and the movie plays well (except for the fact its about 1/8 of my tv)

can this be a clue somehow?

[zaxtorrent]

I've finally got it everyone!!!

I managed to do it with vlc mediaplayer 0.8.6
go to settings, Video, check the advanced settings checkbox on the lower right, go on to outgoing modules subsetting and there from videooutgoing module choose OpenGL video output!

with these i can watch a movie on the tv and play on the monitor no problem at all!

Yippiee!

(i guess the key is to get the player to not play using directx or direct3d but with opengl, so if you can get a player to do this, it might work with other players as well)

Cheers!

thx for reacting