All media players driving me wild !!!

[Philippe Gosselin]

Hi all,


I had a problem with overlay option in every players on my computer (media,BS,Vlan)

When the overlay is on the image turns out very dark but as soon as the overlay is unchecked it is all back to normal , like I shot and capture it (shot with GL2 and edited with Vegas).

But if I remove the overlay and play a file the image turns green after a few seconds of playback and the player crash.That's true with all players !!!

Any body got a take on this

Thanks

Phil

[Christopher Lefchik]

Sounds like it might be a problem with your graphics card/graphics card driver. Try updating to the latest driver for your graphics card.

[Rob Lohman]

This indeed has nothing to do with the players, but everything with your
system. Problems can include the graphics card hardware itself, your
mainboard, memory, operating system installation, graphics drivers or just
a messed up system.

Which graphics card do you have? As Christopher pointed out, make sure
you have the latest updates for the card.

One final thing you can try is lowering the hardware acceleration in the
advanced display properties, this may help (but will result in lower performance
from your card).

[Philippe Gosselin]

Hi guys,


Well I am kinda stuck with my graphic card , it is a gforce fx 5600, not bad but the latest drivers from nvidia crash my computer not matter what I do so I am stuck with the not-so old drivers.

I also tried to what you suggested Rob and after playing the any file a few times the problem is back again. I mean I am playing Doom 3 at high quality settings without a glitch so it would be surprising that my card has an issue. But who knows ...right ?

Thanks for your time , if you have anything else please throw it in :)


Phil

[Rob Lohman]

That your card isn't working with the latest drivers either is not a good sign.
I assume this card is an AGP card?

The only thing you can really do is try a re-install or swap hardware
components.

I'm sorry, but I don't have any more advice for you.

Good luck!

[Christopher Lefchik]

Have you tried getting the newest driver from the manufacturer of your video card, instead of from nVidia's web site? Or if you were getting the drivers from your card manufacturer, did you try the one direct from nVidia instead?

The graphics card manufacturers can customize the nVidia drivers for their graphics cards. That could be the cause of your problem (if you are using their customized driver) or the customized version might fix your problem (if you are using the generic one from nVidia).

[Philippe Gosselin]

Hi Chris,


Oh yeah I tried both with the same desastrous results , they both crash my computer upon startup.

Thank goodness Asus's customer services is so fast and efficient I don't even know why I am posting here ;)

Thank you for your time

Phil

[Philippe Gosselin]

well after some fooling around with drivers and players there seems to be a temporary solution.

In BS player there is an under the "video rendering tab" there are several rendering and all of them failed me so far except the "VMR-9" one.

When this option is selected the playback is neither too dark or crash and turns green after a few seconds.

So if you experienced the same issue give that a try.

Now the next thing would be to write to these BS programmer and ask them so what makes this method of rendering special :)

Keep you posted

Thanks

Phil

[Rob Lohman]

Philippe: I think you are going about this the wrong way. What good will it
do to e-mail that progammer? It will tell you nothing. The problem is with
your hardware or installation. So you need to sort that out.

Do a complete re-install on a clean system (so don't fix or upgrade the current
installation). If the problem persists there must be some hardware problem.

A good company (or perhaps a friend) should be able to help you sort out
these problems by testing another graphics card. If it is not solved with
another card (that works in another system) the problem is almost certain
your mainboard. Get that replaced in that case.

It seems you are wasting a lot of time with all this dancing around the problem,
it could've been fixed last week with some good testing!

[Philippe Gosselin]

Hi Rob ,


Thanks for your passionnate reply:)

The thing is I do have a computer network diploma that I got in college , I am just not all knowing.

So you can rest assured that all the testing has been done over and over prior to posting this question here.

I just wanted to see if someone had the exact problem and if so how he got it fixed.

Like I said before I can run Doom3 on high quality settings at 30 fps , so if something was wrong with my hardware it would've shown by now. Also , I reinstalled XP maybe a month ago and had the same problem before and besides , XP run very smoothly considering I am hammering it every day with all kinds of games, rendering and the likes. Nothing crashes so far, boot time is minimal etc...

I will let you know if something turns out :)

Thanks

Phil

[Rob Lohman]

Well, you have to agree with me that SOMETHING is wrong. Being able to run
Doom or standard XP does not say much in regards to media players.

Look at it in this light. A game like doom has some loading time where it is
taking a lot of data off the harddisk and loading that into memory and in
your graphics card. You then start to play till the next loading point. Almost
everything will be either in main memory or your graphics card memory.

Your main bus (the one that the harddisk is one) has nothing to do (if the
card is AGP).

However, in the case of playing video the data is constantly being read of
the harddisk and then send to the graphics card (I'm not sure if this crosses
over from south/north bridge or whether it stays on the same bridge on the
main board).

A lot more is happening in terms of bandwidth required on the bus. How much
depends on the type of file you are playing back.

Overlaying video is also a very different function on the graphics card then
rendering a 3D scene (like in doom) or displaying a 2D bitmap (like Windows).
It calls into a very different set of functions on the graphics card.

So having a busted graphics card in the overlay section (not sure how likely
it is a problem exists there) can mean it runs flawless with both Doom and
Windows in general.

There can also be a problem on the mainboard where the combination of
reading the data stream of the harddisk and either sending it directly to the
graphics card (if it has acceleration for decoding) or through the main CPU
to the graphics card results in some form of collission or bottleneck somewhere.

That this works flawlessly for millions of users and not for use suggests
something is wrong with your hardware or some other piece of equipment
or software is getting in the way.

Also make sure that you do not have any IRQ conflicts (check during boot
in the bios or in the device manager in Windows), those can mess up overlays
as well.

One of the others things that could be faulty as well is your main memory or
memory on the graphics card.

Good luck!