Theater Mode or Video Overlay

[Arlin]

It seems older video cards had a GREAT feature for showing full-screen videos on a second display: Theater Mode or Video Overlay settings.

This allowed the video player & controls to be on one display (the operator display), while the video played full-screen on the other display (the audience display). Was a GREAT way to provide simple, seamless video playback.

BUT, it seems newer video cards & software no longer support this feature.
I found a few references that this might due to HDCP or DRM restrictions.
Can anyone confirm?
Is there a simple way around this?
And please don't suggest ProPresenter or some other sort of software... I am aware of those, but I really want theater mode back.

[Esoteric]

I believe it was removed for just the reason you are thinking and as far as I know there is no way around it.

Well, there is one way....

But not the way that you want.

[Arlin]

The reason I don't want to get into PP, EW, or even PPT is I just want to make it as easy as possible for ANYONE to just open a video file and play it full screen on the secondary display.
No need to first bring the video into some (any) sort of presentation software.
Perfectly intuitive, no training needed (almost).

Right now, we are using PPT 2010, which actually works pretty well for playing video clips... not video backgrounds yet, though.
And you still need to first bring the video clip into PPT.

Theater mode was just really handy for playing a video clip someone hands to you on a flash drive or you download from the internet...
(And I know ProPresenter is pretty good at that too.)

[EricE]

The new 2.0 VLC player FINALLY lets you pick the output screen - see the attachment for details...

[Arlin]

THANKS for the info.
Is that a Mac screenshot? I am using Windows7 and the interface & settings are a bit different.

I messed around for quite a while, and finally got it working with VLC 2.0:

1. DISABLE "Accelerated video output (Overlay)".
2. specify "DirectX (DirectDraw) video output"
3. Choose the right display for the DirectX: Display device (DISPLAY2 in my case).
4. DISABLE "Use GPU accelerated decoding"

After spending a few hours figuring out those settings, it works really well!
See attached screenshots for those settings.

[wotz]

We have been using media player classic for 3 or 4 years. It is all set to open the file on projector, full screen, then close when the clip is finished.

We now run most through songshow, but still find the occaisional need to use mpc.

[EricE]

Originally Posted by Arlin

THANKS for the info.
Is that a Mac screenshot? I am using Windows7 and the interface & settings are a bit different.

Yeah - that was while I was on my Mac. The addition of the Fullscreen Video Device is what I have been waiting a loooong time for!

I messed around for quite a while, and finally got it working with VLC 2.0:

1. DISABLE "Accelerated video output (Overlay)".
2. specify "DirectX (DirectDraw) video output"
3. Choose the right display for the DirectX: Display device (DISPLAY2 in my case).
4. DISABLE "Use GPU accelerated decoding"

What video card do you have? Hopefully some of that tweaking was just video card/driver specific and not universal!

After spending a few hours figuring out those settings, it works really well!
See attached screenshots for those settings.

Awesome - I'm glad it worked for you. Playing video on one screen with controls on another is something I long thought should be trivial. Thank goodness the videolan folks added it to VLC 2!

[Arlin]

The video card is an nVidia GeForce GT 440 (Fermi) with the latest WHQL drivers.
I got that because it was one of the few cards available with dual DVI-I ports for our VGA based video system (1024x768).

(begin rant)
Video compatibility & support is the biggest pain there is in media. The mess of competing players, codecs, formats, containers, different bit-rates, & resolutions make 'guaranteed' playback almost impossible. Windows likes .wmv... Mac likes .mov.. and crossing them does not work well. Why can't we all just get along?
(end rant)

[EricE]

Originally Posted by Arlin

Why can't we all just get along?

Money. Compression - good compression - is hard to do, not many can do it and those that do expect to be compensated for their skill

[Arlin]

Yeah, but audio & still pics pretty much just work.
Video, on the other hand, is always seems to be hit-or-miss between different platforms.