The VideoLAN Forums

Hi, new to the forum. Ive been using vlc player for a while with my HTPC with no problems. All of a sudden when I watch movies with the player the screen saver comes on. I didnt have a problem with it in the past. I dont want to have to change the screen saver settings on the pc because I have a plasma and it is prone to image burn in. any help would be appreciated.

OS?

Im using vista.

I can confirm this happening on Vista. It didn't happen in RC1 and appeared in 1.0.0 for me (never tried RC2/RC3/RC4). It is also still present in 1.1.0-20090711-2204 nightly build.

Do you maybe not have windows updates installed or something? I'm using Vista SP2 and haven't experienced this problem and I'm running it through hdmi to a tv and I haven't experience this problem.

I tried it on 2 different systems, on laptop with Vista 32bit home premium and desktop with Vista 32bit ultimate, both sp2 with all updates, with same result.
But since it works for you then I assume it happens under more circumstances then just running vlc under Vista dunno. Only things I changed from default settings are language and video output to OpenGL. Maybe someone else has similar experience ?

EDIT:
Actually here we go, it is connected with OpenGL video output, switching to default (DirectX 3D in my case?) solved it. To reproduce it vlc must be restarted after changing output method to OpenGL.

small update

It behaves same under XP so it definitely isn't Vista specific and vlc actually doesn't have to be restarted to reproduce it.
So the "disable screensaver" setting doesn't work with OpenGL video output method under Windows.

Unless someone experiences same thing under other platform this topic should be moved to Windows Troubleshooting so we don't disturb fellow Linux and Mac OS users with yet another Windows specific bug

I can also confirm this problem (under Windows Vista 32-bit). If I select OpenGL output, the video looks great but the screen saver comes on. If I select the default video output (Direct 3D) the blacks are all washed out. I am using an 8800gts with the latest drivers from nVidia.

Try disabling "overlay video" and see if it works. Newer card's don't have an overlay surface.
I'm running an Nvidia GTX 260.