Start on second monitor?

[sub]

It seems to work OK for me. Menu animations smooth and playback seems to be OK, altho I haven't watched much. I'm using an Nvidia 6200 card into a Viewsonic HDTV at 720P via DVI-to-HDMI as a second monitor. Primary is a 20" Dell LCD from the SVGA output of the card.

Any way to tell from the log if it's using acceleration?

Look for rough animation, or rough video playback, or much greater CPU usage when playing video on the second monitor.

Then again, I was thinking of using this second monitor thing to justify a new PC dedicated to GB-PVR...

lol - you could always pretend you never read about this patch

[adspence]

Dont get too excited until you try it, but....

Try the attached patch. If you have <StartOnSecondMonitor>true</StartOnSecondMonitor> in config.xml, and are running fullscreen, then it will start app on the second monitor and ask direct3d to initialise acceleration for the second adapter. Whether this results in a smooth UI and smooth video playback will depend on whether you videocard and drivers support acceleration on the second display. (it does seem to be ok on one of my machines, with nvidia 7600GS video card)

Drat, why did I have to go to work today...can't wait to rush home and try this out now.

Sub, whether it works or not, I praise your dedication in looking into issues like this.

[alnaln]

Many thanks sub.

One question. I see you updated nativeutilities.dll as well as PVRX2.exe ...
are these one-off fixes or will they be permanent additions to the
executables?

(Additionally, with the nativeutilities.dll - does it include the latest
HVR-1600 QAM fixes, or is this version modified from the original version?)


Thanks sub!

[nkh]

Wow! Thanks Sub! Everything is still very smooth (animations, video), mpeg2 playback is <10% and mp4 in an mkv container is <20% (bringing the osd up doesn't seem to make any difference).

btw, I have a monitor running 1680x1050 as the primary display and my tv connected via s-video running 1024x768 as the second display.

[carrick1973]

Awesome SUB - You are the man! You really do have dedication to this product which is excellent. If you could make this part of the 'official' 1.0+ application, it would truly be appreciated by quite a number of us 'dual use' computer users. Even if it was a 'use at your own risk' checkbox on the main tab!

I'll have to try this out when I get home. I'm running an ATI 9500 PRO, so hopefully the ATI or Omega drivers will support this on the second monitor.

NKH - are you really getting 1024 x 768 using the s-video cable? I thought s-video could only support 480i resolution.

Thanks,
Steve

[nkh]

NKH - are you really getting 1024 x 768 using the s-video cable? I thought s-video could only support 480i resolution.

It's connected to a normal PAL tv, so the output which the tv sees is probably always the same regardless of what windows is set to. But to me it looks better when I let the gfx render the picture in 1024x768 and then scale it down to whatever the s-video out gives in PAL than if I set it to 720x576 or something lower.

Edit, it looks like it's outputting 576i over the s-video -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-video

[adspence]

Drat, why did I have to go to work today...can't wait to rush home and try this out now.

Sub, whether it works or not, I praise your dedication in looking into issues like this.

At home (at last)...well, sub is a superstar. Its definitely accelerating on the 2nd monitor.

If I leave the <StartOnSecondMonitor>false</StartOnSecondMonitor> in config.xml, and drag the app onto the 2nd monitor and ALT-ENTER to make fullscreen and run a h264/720p file I get 80-90% CPU (both cores). Flip the config to "true" and run the same file...15% (single core). Fantastic.

Just keeping fingers crossed that an old problem I used to see with VMR9 Custom doesn't appear. Unfortunately I don't have the test file that always exhibited this problem.

Take it back about the eye candy...PVRX2 does indeed look much nicer. :-)

[carrick1973]

Ah - gotcha NKH - I should have looked to see where you were from - of course you're running PAL which indeed is 576i.

Now I just have to get home and give it a try. Can't wait to see if it works (fingers crossed).
Steve

[Wakalaka]

There is no setting in the config app anymore, since the majority of video card will not support the required Direct3D acceleration on the second monitor, but with the patch I provided above installed, you can try setting <StartOnSecondMonitor>true</StartOnSecondMonitor> in config.xml and it will at least try.

(that checkbox you refer to just used to set the <StartOnSecondMonitor> setting to true/false in config.xml)

So in 1.08 you check for StartOnSecondMonitor in config.xml, and if the entry doesn't exist, you don't show the checkbox?

[sub]

At home (at last)...well, sub is a superstar. Its definitely accelerating on the 2nd monitor.

If I leave the <StartOnSecondMonitor>false</StartOnSecondMonitor> in config.xml, and drag the app onto the 2nd monitor and ALT-ENTER to make fullscreen and run a h264/720p file I get 80-90% CPU (both cores). Flip the config to "true" and run the same file...15% (single core). Fantastic.

Great, that definitely sounds like its working for you then.

Take it back about the eye candy...PVRX2 does indeed look much nicer. :-)