VLC 1.03 movie backgrounds

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VLC 1.03 movie backgrounds

Postby paulstokes » Tue Dec 08, 2009 10:14 pm

I've just upgraded VLC from 0.99 to 1.03 and have noticed differences, both good and bad.

:D The good - looping videos now work properly, without a momentary reload of the file which used to happen and which made it unusable for a looping background. Great news!

:cry: The bad - .mov files now seem to be problematic. I can use an .mpg looping file as 'background' for song words (great for a Christingle service this evening!), but .mov files do not appear to work. I can use VLC to watch a .mov on its own (on my PC, but not on the Church's PC), but it does not play as background for songs on either machine.

Anybody have a clue what the problem would be, seeing as I can get the .mpg's to display perfectly well ?
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Re: VLC 1.03 movie backgrounds

Postby danparkes » Wed Dec 09, 2009 2:27 pm

My guess with the inability to play .mov files is due to you not having the right codecs on your system. The MOV format is a container format, meaning that the actual video it contains may actually be in another format, such as MP4, MPG etc. Microsoft's AVI format works in the same way, so these types are not "true" formats in the same way as MPG, MP3 etc.

One suggestion to solve the issue is to first upgrade the version of QuickTime. This should update the codecs on your system as well. I think VLC uses the QuickTime ones (and indeed any other codec) if they are present rather than it's own built in ones, but I could be wrong.

Another suggestion is to convert the MOV file. One of the most common formats used in MOV files is MP4 so that would be an ideal file type to try. If you need software to do the conversion have a look at MediaCoder at: http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/ It seems to cope with any format and an additional codec pack is also available to download. It also shows you the true format contained within the container format which is very useful.

Hope that helps.
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Re: VLC 1.03 movie backgrounds

Postby paulstokes » Thu Dec 10, 2009 10:20 pm

Dan, thanks for the suggestions. I'll have a look into the codecs question, but I'm not persuaded that this is the issue. Here's why:-

On my home PC, VLC is able to play the .mov file successfully, so the appropriate codec must be in place. But when I run Zionworx, the .mov does not work as a video overlay - I simply have the words showing against a black background (well, technically not black, as it's #000001 in RGB, but hey). However, when I try using a .mpg instead, the overlay works properly, with words appearing to be in front of the movie. So...
  • VLC can play the .mov
  • VLC can play the .mpg
  • Zionworx displays words over the .mpg
  • Zionworx does not display words over the .mov
The logical conclusion is therefore that VLC 1.03 has a problem playing .mov files as an overlay onto the near-black background, but has no problem playing .mpg files onto the same background.

Now, to complicate matter further, the previous version of VLC that I used (0.99 I think) certainly did overlay the .mov successfully. It only stopped working when I updated to version1.03. But the older version would not loop movies properly - they would jump and display the window momentarily as they reloaded.

So, to use the overlay to provide moving backgrounds, I must use VLC 1.03. But this version has a problem with .mov files when using them in this way. It may be a new setting that needs to be adjusted, but I did retain all the previous settings when I updated VLC (ie: not deleting during uninstall, then opting to retain them during the install process).

Yes, I shall need to transcode, so the MediaCoder suggestion may prove very helpful, thanks. But I'd also like to get to the bottom of the mystery, as I won't be the only one having this problem.
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Re: VLC 1.03 movie backgrounds

Postby danparkes » Sat Feb 06, 2010 2:24 pm

OKI, I think I've got to the bottom of this one, at least on my home PC. I've had problems on this computer with not being able to run video backgrounds no matter what the file type but I've had no problems with the church laptop. I've just upgraded to VLC 1.0.5 at home and am running VLC 1.0.3 on the church laptop. Both computers are running Windows XP with SP 3.

The first issue is related to Microsoft DirectX. In order for videos to display correctly (i.e. using their proper colours) I had to disable DirectX. This allowed me to play videos but the overlay with ZionWorx did not work. I enabled DirectX and the videos played but they were shown mainly in green and other psychedelic colours. However, in this mode the video overlay with ZionWorx did work (not that you'd really want to use it given the green video)!

In this mode (with DirectX enabled) when I played a video I'd get an onscreen graphic about ASUS Splendid. I didn't really take much notice of it as I thought it was related to the codec used to display the video (in the same way you get the DivX logo when playing a DivX encoded video).

The conclusion from this is that DirectX must be actiavated in order to enable video overlays. However, the videos still play using the DirectX settings within VLC even with DirectX turned off which I thought was quie interesting. I'm thinking that VLC is not hindered by the DirectX settings but some other component is.

My thoughts then turned to the graphics cards settings (remember the ASUS Splendid graphic mentioned above), and bingo, this is where I found the solution. I'm using an ASUS graphics card running a ATI graphics processor and the problem was traced to an ASUS specific setting in the graphics card settings.

I opened the Display Properties from the desktop and selected the Settings tab. This is where the dual monitors are configured (resolution and colour quality, etc). On here is a button labelled Advanced. Within the Advanced settings there are yet more tabs, one of which is labelled ASUS, containing settings related to the graphics card. This yet again displays two tabs, one called ASUS OSD and the other called ASUS Splendid. On the ASUS Splendid tab is a tick box labelled Enable ASUS Splendid. This was ticked so I unticked it and applied this setting and closed down the Display Properties dialogue. Bingo, problem solved. I can now play any video file in overlay mode with ZionWorx.

The conclusion from this second step is that DirectX is used by specific functions on the graphics card and these additional functions (i.e. ASUS Splendid) need to be disabled in order to run overlays in ZionWorx properly.

A tip is to put shortcuts to DirectX Diagnostics and the Display Properties on the desktop to enable changing settings quickly should it be required.

I hope the above info helps.
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