XP Dual monitor problem

When I play a movie file using windows media player the video will play in the small media player window on my primary screen and it will play full screen on the secondary. Does anyone else with xp and dual displays have this problem ?

I also tried the asus dvd player that came with the video card I got and it does the same thing. Quicktime works normally but it won't play all the file formats that windows media player does.

Have you got a twin-head video card, or two seperate cards?

it is a dual head card Link

Are you saying that it will not play full screen on both monitors?

I have a 2 head video card (one DVI and one RGB) and I can only get video to show on the primary, not the secondary. I thought that this must be normal...

- Jon

In reply to:

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I have a 2 head video card (one DVI and one RGB) and I can only get video to show on the primary, not the secondary. I thought that this must be normal...

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same here - yours isnt a millenium G550 is it ?

No, I have a NVidea GeForce 4 Ti 4200...

- Jon

I don't want to play the video full screen. I am just double clicking it and letting windows media player play it at whatever resolution the video is. I get the movie playing in the normal media player on the primary screen but it also automatically plays it full screen on the secondary.

The card I have is linked a couple of posts up it is a geforce 5200 dual DVI from asus.

You know? I think I know whats happening to you... Media Player seems to remember the size that you last had it set to. Try un-maximizing and re-sizing the Media Player window and try your test again... I think it's just returning to the size you left it at the last time you closed Media Player...

- Jon

That isn't it because I'm not telling it to play in both monitors it just does it. Here's a picture of what I am getting. Also when the video it playing I can't move the mouse to the monitor it is playing full screen on. Then when I close windows media player the 2nd display shuts off and won't work unless I reboot.

oops too big

Oh, guess I didn't get it. So when you double click on the video thats playing, it expands the movie to full screen on the left monitor if you do it when Media Player is on the right, and expands it to less than full screen if you have Media Player on the left monitor?

Maybe you should ditch Media Player and try it with Winamp or something...?

- Jon

I should have taken the picture in the first place it's hard to describe.

I tried using quicktime and it works fine. I tried using the media player from asus included with the card and it does the same thing as windows media player.

I am going to try and reinstall the driver for the heck of it. When I installed it the first time I only had one diaplay connected via VGA. If that doesn't work I will try some more players. I just wanted to verify if others experience this and it just a problem with windows.

Also try Zoom Player
http://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_download.shtml

I think it's something in the Settings.

Go to Display Properties -> "Settings" Tab Click on "Advanced"

Now click on the Tab that has your Video Card name displayed (Mine is "GeForce DDR"). Now you should have this control window to the left (see attachement). If you don't have that open the green looking thing on the left will open it.

Now click on "Overlay Controls" the selections on the right will now change.

In the "Full Screen Video Mirroring Controls"
Does "Full Screen Device" say enabled?

You were right thanks !

I just reinstalled the driver before reading this and it fixed it but for the heck of it I changed the setting you pointed out to auto (it only had auto and disabled) and it caused the same behavior as before. When I installed the driver the first time I just had my old crt so maybe it set it to enabled when I reinstalled with the two lcd's connected it was set to disabled but default.

You have some setting enabled that is causng a dump of your overlay onto the secondary display. This is a FEATURE. We have a similar feature in our control panel as does Matrox. Try installing a full set of current NVIDIA drivers and then have a good search through anything about controlling overlays or video.

The primary usage of such a setup is to allow you to have a TV connected as a secondary display and automatically force the video to full screen on that device. And this is to work around problem with MS' Direct VA and overlays on a secondary device (they're not supported apparently - I still don't have as affirmative nor technical a description of this issue as I would like - and it pissed me off considering where I work)

The ATI drivers have yet ANOTHER feature to work around this. For anyone interested (even for th future) it's located in the Multia Media Center Configuration application. It's the "Enable Multi Monitor Support" option under the DVD tab (first tab). This in fact works for any format using the same codec supplied by ATI for DVD playback. If you are using a different codec, it may or may not support multi-monitors already, depending on how it is implemented. Using this feature DOES use an overlay on the secondary display, but I believe it's not going though DirectVA (damn, I hope that's the proper term for the API I'm thinking of). It's supposed to have a performance hit but seems to work very well.

Hope this was informative. Moral of the story: Buy ATI products.

Bruno

Edit: Ya, I didn't read the last two posts before replying.. Hehe. But at least it confirms what I suspcted. Ok, I more than suspected, I was positive. :P

Thanks for replying anyway.

The ATI drivers have yet ANOTHER feature to work around this. For anyone interested (even for th future) it's located in the Multia Media Center Configuration application. It's the "Enable Multi Monitor Support" option under the DVD tab (first tab). This in fact works for any format using the same codec supplied by ATI for DVD playback.

Cool, this works with Media Player Classic and shows streamed off my ReplayTV unit. I set MPC to be fullscreen on the second monitor, and it seems it's using the ATI MPEG2 codec.

Nice thing about MPC is that is dosen't break full screen mode when I am clicking on things on the first monitor.