Dual displays: huge performance penalty
Posted: 12 Mar 2011 04:26
Hi all,
I've recently acquired a professional 22" LaCie CRT monitor, which turns out to be not just great for photo/video color correction, but also for watching Naruto and Battlestar Galactica.
But now I'm running into some problems with my new dual display setup (extended desktop). 
Aside from Windows not playing fair with color profiles (ugh) and constantly forgetting the correct refresh rates and monitor placement whenever I change a setting, the setup makes for some even stranger side effects with other software.
The most annoying being:
VLC Player running very slow and being mostly unresponsive on either monitor,
Of course, when playing video on both monitors, one would expect a performance penalty, but the weird thing is that this issue occurs even when the video window is, in its entirety, on one of both displays. Of course, actually using both of them with the clone filter only worsens the problem, up to the point of having to wait a minute for VLC to close. The issue only occurs when playing video files, not music files. The severity of the performance penalty *seems* to depend more on the codec used, than on the frame size, but that's just a guess.
VLC has always been running very smoothly, and it runs smoothly again as soon as I disable the other monitor in the Display applet of the Windows Control Panel. However, being more of a collector (hoarder?) than a scrapyard regular, I'd really love to keep my old 17" monitor running alongside the "new" 22" screen.
I'd also rather not revert to the DirectX (DirectDraw) output module, because it came with its own slew of problems (like a flickering full screen controller).
My setup is as follows:
Thanks in advance for any attempts to educate me more about the wondrous world of VLC and multiple display setups.
Regards,
Lennart Goosens.
I've recently acquired a professional 22" LaCie CRT monitor, which turns out to be not just great for photo/video color correction, but also for watching Naruto and Battlestar Galactica.
But now I'm running into some problems with my new dual display setup (extended desktop). Aside from Windows not playing fair with color profiles (ugh) and constantly forgetting the correct refresh rates and monitor placement whenever I change a setting, the setup makes for some even stranger side effects with other software.
The most annoying being:
VLC Player running very slow and being mostly unresponsive on either monitor,
- only when playing a video
- and only when using the Direct3D output module.
Of course, when playing video on both monitors, one would expect a performance penalty, but the weird thing is that this issue occurs even when the video window is, in its entirety, on one of both displays. Of course, actually using both of them with the clone filter only worsens the problem, up to the point of having to wait a minute for VLC to close. The issue only occurs when playing video files, not music files. The severity of the performance penalty *seems* to depend more on the codec used, than on the frame size, but that's just a guess.
VLC has always been running very smoothly, and it runs smoothly again as soon as I disable the other monitor in the Display applet of the Windows Control Panel. However, being more of a collector (hoarder?) than a scrapyard regular, I'd really love to keep my old 17" monitor running alongside the "new" 22" screen.
I'd also rather not revert to the DirectX (DirectDraw) output module, because it came with its own slew of problems (like a flickering full screen controller).
My setup is as follows:
- Pentium IV 2.66 GHz, 533 MHz FSB (Northwood)
- Some IBM Motherboard, probably with i865G chipset
- 1,5 GB of PC2700 DDR memory (4 seperate modules)
- nVidia GeForce FX5700LE video card with 128 MB RAM (ASUS V9570LE/TD to be precise)
- Windows XP Professional SP3
- VLC 1.1.7
Thanks in advance for any attempts to educate me more about the wondrous world of VLC and multiple display setups.
Regards,
Lennart Goosens.