problems? Certian video streams not being projected through projectors..

[somerfeld]

for example i toss a dvd into a laptop and output the information to the projectors to be viewed. I see my desktop,.. then open the dvd program in minimal view. So I see the dvd program and a bit of my desktop can be seen. I press play, the dvd plays very nice on my laptop and I can see everything on it. Yet my projectors output nothing.. of the actuall dvd output however will output the rest of my desktop.

Another example, if i use winamp and use the visual studio it does the same thing.. show everything but the actuall visuals of the generated images, but i see everything perfectly on the computer.

I belive this could be a resolution conflict forcing the projectors not to see the video. I really dont know whats happeing or why.

Please help - thanks

[fluchtpunkt]

the 'problem' with the dvd is possibly a copy protection. i.e. you're not supposed to be able to view your dvd on any other output than your laptop screen, after all, being able to output to another device means being able to copy. it also means not needing to buy a dvd player for watching movies on tv.
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i've encountered the exact same problem with dvd's on quite a few laptops (i.e. output on second monitor is ok !except for the movie itself!). maybe installing a different dvd-player will help.

[eXhale]

Hmmm I've never had problems projecting DVDs from my computer. The signal hangs when it detects a VCR though (passing through a mixer removes the protection).

[MoRpH]

Yep never had a problem with that either, or running DVD out and then straight into my USB capture/ DV cam or VHS, guess I don't have protection on it ;)

Are you just mirroring your desktop or is it dual head because the issue might be that it can't do a directX/video overlay to that output.

[sleepytom]

sounds like your computer won't do video overlay on its secondry monitor - try changing the external display to be the primary windows monitor (this is sometimes quite difficult!!) you should then get overlay and thus an image but you won't be able to see the video on your laptops screen as it will become the secondry monitor! on some systems you can get both the displays to be primary and thus achive video output and preview - there is allmost always a performance loss by running like this though (as the graphics card is displaying everything twice) if you tell us the name and model number of your laptop / graphics card i might be able to be a little more specific

[MoRpH]

Bingo, thats wot I was talkin about Tom :D

[GreenHippo]

I've seen this a few times when I worked on conferences. There are a few quick fixes but since on a conference you tend to do a quick fix then the client runs off home with the hardware before you can investigate, it's a tricky one to say what it each for every one of them but the following are worth a bash:

Update DirectX and video display adapter drivers. There also seems to be a lot of related stuff in certain OS service packs so if you can put up with the wait download all available.

If you are doing it as a dual screen function, set the resolution of the projector and the display settings for the second monitor to the same resolution. Try setting your external display (in this case the projector) as your primary display. Not all machines let you do this and you may as a cosequence lose it on the laptop/computer but gain it on the projector. I have had dual output laptops which can't handle high res on a second monitor so match the two for resolution etc
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If you are using a software dvd player then try checking it isn't forcing resolutions to higher or lower settings. This will be somewhere in the display properties for that program. Sometimes this causes a problem if you are running it in a window.

Finally one way that seems to work as a short term fix is to disable hardware acceleration. This may make the video play badly but will at least get you up and running in the short term.

I'm no expert in this area but have encountered these problems on conferences which are identical. The above fixes are a starting point. I would be interested to find a permanent fix so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on some of them. It always seemed to need a different fix for different hardware although the problem was always the same.