Video Cues on extended desktop

[Dannyboy]

Hi All

I wonder if anyone can help...

I am trying to add some video cues to SCS. I am running SCS 10.2 professional, XP and I have extended my desktop to a second monitor and enabled video overlay on my graphics card.

I have 2 mpeg files set up as Cue 1 and Cue 2 (I want the second video to replace the first). When I play the first cue, the video appears on my second display, but when I activate the second the screen goes blank. When I stop everthing and restart the playlist, nothing plays, just the audio from the video. I have tried wmv's in their place with the same result, and have tried on three different computers to no avail. When I disable the second display, the video's behave and preview on the primary display. Major headscratching...

Thanks in advance

Danny

[Richard Simpson]

That's quite normal behavior- you get that a lot with PowerPoint. Just change your displays around from 1 and 2 to 2 and 1in the display properties. The primary monitor (1) should always show your video whereas the secondary monitor may not, depending on the graphics adapter.

[Dannyboy]

Thanks for your reply Richard.

I've tried switching the monitors around with no luck. I'm not sure but SCS seems to always play the videos cues on the secondary screen. I can move the playlist onto the second screen, but not the video to the primary. (?)

[Dannyboy]

Up update to my last reply.

I can play videos using WMP on either screen, but when I play a powerpoint file, videos will only play when the presentation is set to play on the primary screen. With powerpoint you can choose where to display the presention, so it seems that Richard has hit the nail on the head.

Is there anyway of telling SCS to output the video cues to the primary monitor rather than the Secondary, or is there something else I can do?

Thanks

[Mike Daniell]

Is there anyway of telling SCS to output the video cues to the primary monitor rather than the Secondary...?

I'll see if I can provide a temporary mod for this so you can check if it solves the issue. I'll email you tomorrow my time. What screen resolutions do you have for your primary and secondary screens (eg 1024x768, etc)?

[Dannyboy]

Hi Mike

That's very kind of you.

At the moment I am using 1280 x 1024, but am happy to use 1024 x 768, whatevers easier.

Thanks again

Danny

[Mike Daniell]

Hmmm. Not as easy as I thought it would be to swap the windows to the other screen. With my first attempt to swap the windows on the fly I ended up with two blank screens. I would need to spend more time on this to sort it out, so this may need to be included as a Feature Request.

As for the original problem you raised, when I developed the video cue functionality this was a scenario I ran successfully many times and still have in one of my test cue files. For the test I use a couple of small demo AVI files, and I have the second video cue set to auto-start 2 seconds before the end of the first video cue. It always runs successfully, with the second video cue taking over from the first video cue. This is running on a Vista laptop (HP Compaq), fully up-to-date, with WIndows Media Player 11 installed. (An interface into Windows Media Player is used by SCS to play video cues.) The second screen is a Philips LCD monitor, 1024x768.

If you play your first video cue through to completion, allow the cue to 'complete' and then play the second video cue, does the second video cue play corectly (using the second monitor)?

A couple of other questions: What version of WMP do you have installed? How much RAM do you have on the PC?

[Dannyboy]

Hi Mike

Sorry for not replying earlier.

To answer your questions:

If I play the the first cue through to completion (only 20secs) through to completion the second one doesn't display, I can only hear the audio. Then when I reset to the top, the first doesn't play.

I have WMP 11 installed and 1Gb of RAM.

It's very strange. When I disconnect the second monitor or projector the cues play fine in a small preview window on the run screen. I changed resolution setting tried different computers, even my home one with a much higher spec to no avail.

Thanks for your help

Danny