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.