Overlay not working properly

[vbkun]

Hi

I've come here cause i'm out of places to go and this problem also does afect videolan.
It's a overlay problem longer them 6 years. I have no ideia how to solve it and i guess i'm not smart enought to find it on google. Let me describe it.

The video overlay works.... but it gets the wrong "projection color"... On vlc i just see my desktop color instead of video. In windows media player and powerdvd I see a weird dark color, almost black. Only program that was never aftected by it was Windvd, i guess that's cause it seems to overlay in yuv2.

Another important point is that this comes and goes... today it's all ok then BUM... it happens, stick around for a week or 2 or some months... then it goes away.

Now... for some who might think : "ow this maybe videocard or driver or somethin"... During these 6 years i've had 2 diferent video card (first a gf4 mx and then a ati radeon 9600 pro). I've had also 2 mother boards, Before i had a amd processor and now a pentium... etc... Resuming... the only things that remained those 6 years are:

- The problem
- Windows Xp

So i'm pretty sure it's somethin related to windows itself or directx or a update of it.

If anyone can please help me out i'll be etternally thanks.

[Arite]

A good article (from the author of VirtualDub) which describes the reason/cause behind the colour issue:
http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=91

The issue is probably due to two conflicting applications both trying to use the DirectX overlay - it is a DirectDraw/Direct3D/DirectX issue as far as I know anyway. Sometimes restarting may help, especially if the problem is started by e.g. a video game that crashes (e.g. Half-Life 2 and the "Internal driver error in IDirect3DDevice9::Present()" error caused this issue on a couple of occassions).

In VLC the problem can be solved by one of the two methods ordinarily:

1. Disable video overlay. To do this go to :
   Settings >> Preferences... >> Video
   An untick "Overlay video output". Press "Save" and try a video.
2. Change the video output module. To do this go to:
   Settings >> Preferences... >> Video >> Output modules
   And tick the "Advanced options" tickbox. Then from the drop-down box select e.g. "OpenGL video output" ("Windows GDI video output" may also work) and press "Save". Then restart VLC and try a video.

For other applications (and main graphics card drivers) you could try deselecting e.g. Hardware/Video Acceleration (this can be done in Windows Media Player).

Updating video drivers can potentially help too, although unlikely to permanently resolve the issue.

Cheers, Arite.

[vbkun]

First of all... thanks for replying

I'm very aware of the information pointed on the article and the solution u proposed. Actually that's exactly what i do when i need to use vlc and overlay is wit the problem.

I just don't think my problem is in the article (i actually had the problems on the article long ago, really long ago, like 1997).

This is diferent and i don't consider disabling overlay a real solution... actually most like video quality doesn't please me at all without overlay, sppecially the colors and specially on hd video.

Since i couldn't describe so clearlly my problem i decided to loop back from videocard tv out to my capture card and post a video from this issue.

As this is something that randonlly starts and randonlly stops, and Murphy is there for all, after i reconfigured video for the loopback the overlay got back to working as it should. I guess this might be a solution

I would please ask that this topic doesn't get closed... cause "for godsake" there must be someone else wit this same issue around and i intend to try record it again next time it happens (wich can be in even more then a month).

Thanks for those who are reading this again. And thanks to that reply also.