Radeon and TV out???

[raid517]

Hi, I setup my gentoo install in dual head mode for my Radeon 9800XT video card.. Well anyhoo everything works fine, and the display on my TV is clear and sharp and very smooth.

However whenever I play a video I can't see any picture on my TV, no matter what application I use - whether it is MPlayer, Xine kaboodle or whatever.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying my whole second screen goes blank, just the window playing the video.

How do I set my system up so I can have video output on both screens?

All input is appreciated.

GJ

[theLEGENDofPAT]

This could possibly be the TYPE of video you're playing. MPlayer, XINE, etc. use the ffmpeg library to play video files and currently ffmpeg doesn't offer support for every popular video codec yet (for example, some Microsoft .WMV input codecs, hence the word "Microsoft"). The best I guess you could do is get the newest version of ffmpeg. Hope this helps!

Pat

[raid517]

Hi I appreciate your input. However The problem is that I can't see any video at all playing on the second screen (although I can see my desktop just fine) regardless of which format of video I try to play. I'm not going to get vey far with building a PVR if I can't get any video out put on my TV, lol.

Again your input is appreciated and I will certainly give your suggestion a try although I am not hopeful. I wish I understood *why* it was happening as maybe then I could begin to work out a solution.

GJ

[raid517]

OK I finally found an answer to this of sorts. For some reason or other ATI's driver configuration utility enables XV overlay extensions on these drivers by default. On the whole this seems to be a good thing, as it appears to have some impact on image quality. (The image quality produced without it isn't fantastic). But the drawback is you can't view video (as in moving video, like a movie and so on) on the seconday TV display. Also several Video playback applications don't work too well without it, such as Mplayer and Video Lan. There is also what appears to be a slight choppyness at times in the video playback during particularly fast motion sequences. But it isn't drastic - or at least so far I haven't been able to find a suitably fast moving video source to really make a judgement.

The problem is I have no idea what XV overlay is and/or why it has such an impact on image quality/performance - or why disabling it allows me to watch video on both screens. There is another option called opengl overlay, which I am equally unsure of.

What are XV and Opengl overlay and which is preferable and why? And is there any way to have smooth high quality video output on both my monitor and my TV without having it enabled?

GJ

[raid517]

On another note I have found that you can change the video driver on most applications even with XV extensions enabled. From what I can see XSHM seems to work quite well in most instances - although I am no clearer why or even what this is.

If anyone can enlighten me, please feel free.

GJ