VLC crashing while playing games

[valclouds]

So, I'm having this problem that's annoying the hell outta me. I have two monitors and I like to watch a movie on one while playing WoW on the other, when I'm doing something boring like fishing or grinding honor in the game. I've been a fan of VLC for a long time, because of it's quality, low memory footprint, and versatility, but lately it's been a real headache.

When I play a file with VLC on my second monitor, with WoW open on my first, VLC will freeze my computer for a few seconds and stop playing. Sometimes the video will play for 5 minutes just fine before it happens, sometimes it'll only last 30 seconds, but it always happens. The visuals on both monitors will freeze up, then both monitors will turn black. I alt-f4 a few times to start closing programs, and once VLC closes, my monitors will turn back to normal. I can watch files with VLC on either monitor when not running WoW just fine. WMP runs just fine on the second monitor while playing WoW, and gives me no issues, but there are some files I need VLC to play, since they won't play in WMP.

I run Vista 32. Both my monitors are on separate Nvidia cards. I run the game on a Geforce GTX 260 and the player on a Geforce 7800 GT. I'm using the 180.48 Nvidia drivers and VLC 0.9.8a. I've tried different drivers and different versions of VLC, but nothing seems to make a difference.

I would just chalk it up to some driver problem, since sometimes when VLC crashes I notice a balloon that pops up that says the driver stopped responding, but WMP works just fine, so I think it's a problem with VLC. It makes no difference if I'm trying to watch the file on fullscreen or windowed mode, though the crashes *seem* to happen slightly faster if it's fullscreen. I'm about to give up on VLC and download all the codecs I need for WMP, but I like the subtitles option with VLC, as well as some of the other more versatile options.

Any ideas? I can provide more information if need be.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

OK.
Try:
1) Disable overlay
2) Change Video Output Module

[valclouds]

Thanks. Disabling the overlay seems to have solved my issue so far. My video has been playing for 5 minutes with no problems. Switching to OpenGl and keeping the overlay on worked, too, but the video was stuttering a little ever minute or so. It seems to work better on default video output with no overlay.

Thanks again.

[larsiano]

It might be a Windows or videodriver issue but 5 years later this problem still exists. Every time a game is started VLC crashes. Sinds there a lot of options in the preferences i wonder what specific setting for 'overlay' needs to be changed or if this can be solved in any other way? Thanks for your time!

[thelfensdrfer]

Same problem here. Default settings, windows 7, latest vlc version.

[JacobMH]

Another 2 years later it is still an issue. But I figured out how to fix it. Go to advanced preferences, go to video, and turn off Overlay video output. Then go back to simple preferences and go to video. Make sure accelerated video output is not checked. Then turn off hardware YUV>RGB. And finally change your output to OpenGL. Not sure if you have to this as well, I just did it in case. I changed the display device to display 2, because I was playing the video on my second monitor. Hope this help!