Issue: Playing game while watching movie

N

n1ce_hat

Gawd
Joined
May 17, 2006
Messages
697
So we're having an issue here with my friends setup. For a year he was able to play games with one monitor and movies on a secondary monitor, with the movie always taking over for sound. First things first, specs: Intel Q6600, P5KC, 4x2GB DDR-1066 OCZ Reaper, MSI nVidia 8600GT 256MB (driver 178.24) running XP SP3.

One day he decides to get a new motherboard, the P5Q-E. Everything works exactly as it should, but for some reason if he has a movie (any resolution) playing on the secondary monitor and then starts a game, the movie disappears and the game plays as normal (you could still see the desktop on the 2nd monitor). When you click anywhere in the 2nd monitor it switches and the movie resumes (on the 2nd monitor, right where it was) and the game disappears from the 1st monitor. This was never an issue with the P5KC and you could play Spore on the 1st and a 1080p movie on the 2nd and no problems ever. Until he got the P5Q-E and traded the P5KC away. Anybody have any input on this? I can't think of what could be causing it to not play both things at once. It has the exact same results with any game & any movie.
 
Ahhh...
America :p

*Sorry I have nothing to offer for help, I was just amused at the idea of watching a movie at the same time as gaming o_O*
 
In the NVidia control panel, goto "Manage 3D Settings"
Make sure "Multi-display/Mixed GPU Acceleration" is set to "multiple display performance mode"

If that doesnt work try the other settings.
 
ivandurago said:
Ahhh...
America :p

*Sorry I have nothing to offer for help, I was just amused at the idea of watching a movie at the same time as gaming o_O*
Click to expand...

hehe.. I do this also.. but I use a second PC for the movie. :p it's geekily hedonistic, yes, but filled with awesomeness. :)

as for help with the issue, I'd have to try it out on my setup and see what works and what doesn't, but Nenu's suggestion is a good start!
 
I'm glad that I saw this. I have asked this question before at another forum and never got any responses. I have wanted to know if it was possible to play video on one monitor (such as a TV) and play a game on the other. I have tried it on my own setup, but as soon as the game launches on the primary monitor, the secondary goes black. But the bigger reason I wanted to make it work was for my father's setup. My son often goes to my mom and dad's and will play games on his PC. A lot of times my dad will stay in the basement with him and watch TV. I want him to be able to watch a movie from the PC while my son games.

Would a dual core cpu be a must? Would it have to be a really good video card? I'm only talking about watching divx or mpeg2, not HD. If you used 2 sound cards and a program like SageTV (in case you don't know, Sage allows you to choose renderers and filters), and had the default set to one card and specified in Sage to use the other as the renderer, then the game should play sound through the default sound device and the video should play through the secondary sound card, correct?
 
I would think at least a dual core and maybe a second video card with hardware decoding ability would be a big help.. a decent sound card should be able to handle playing game and movie sounds at the same time... like an audigy or higher.. I would think. maybe I am off base though.. hrm..
 
Hmmmm...how could you go about doing it? I know in the old days you could have an AGP video card and a PCI video card. But nowadays if you have 2 x16 slots then the cards are running in SLI or Crossfire (which I know nothing about). Could you use one for gaming and one for video? I thought they pretty much work together.
 
Having two video cards installed does not automatically mean they are running in SLI or CrossFire. You could have something like an 8800GT as your primary gaming card, and then a PCIe 7300gs or 6200 or something equally lame running the secondary monitor. Those cards will not operate in SLI, but they will both work at the same time, allowing you to extend your desktop to span both cards/monitors.
 
revenant said:
I would think at least a dual core and maybe a second video card with hardware decoding ability would be a big help.. a decent sound card should be able to handle playing game and movie sounds at the same time... like an audigy or higher.. I would think. maybe I am off base though.. hrm..
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But how would you get the sounds separated. You'd want the movie sounds coming from the TV and the game sounds coming from the comuter speakers. You'd have to be able to control the volumes independently. I thought 2 sound cards would be the only way to do this.
 
Darn it! You guys have gotten me to thinking now. Newegg has an 8400GS pci (not pci-e) video card for $50.
 
I doubt you need a second video card for this, I watch movies and game at the same time, yes I have a sli setup but that's the same as having one card for this purpose, and I remember this working on my last system which had a single 8800GTS. I just play movie and game sound from the computer speakers, since my TV is wall mounted right above my computer setup, it works out good. One problem I've run into is this doesn't seem to work if your game switches resolutions from your primary monitor's desktop resolution, so use the same game resolution as your desktop resolution if you have problems, that may fix it.
 
I wonder if it would be better to use 2 cards of the same manufacturer or if it would be OK to have one ATI and one nvidia? Basically I'm wondering if it'd have conflicts with Catalyst Control Center and nvidia control panel running together. Then again, I wonder if you'd have better control over the 2 if they were separate?

Sorry, I'm not trying (or meaning) to hijack the thread, here.
 
htpc_user said:
But how would you get the sounds separated. You'd want the movie sounds coming from the TV and the game sounds coming from the comuter speakers. You'd have to be able to control the volumes independently. I thought 2 sound cards would be the only way to do this.
Click to expand...

You are right, 2 soundcards are required.
 
htpc_user said:
I wonder if it would be better to use 2 cards of the same manufacturer or if it would be OK to have one ATI and one nvidia? Basically I'm wondering if it'd have conflicts with Catalyst Control Center and nvidia control panel running together. Then again, I wonder if you'd have better control over the 2 if they were separate?

Sorry, I'm not trying (or meaning) to hijack the thread, here.
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In Vista, both cards must be using the same driver as you cannot load 2 separate video drivers.
Therefore both cards must be from the same manufacturer in Vista.
Those rules do not apply to XP, you can have 2 different manufacturers cards.
 
devil22 said:
I doubt you need a second video card for this, I watch movies and game at the same time, yes I have a sli setup but that's the same as having one card for this purpose, and I remember this working on my last system which had a single 8800GTS. I just play movie and game sound from the computer speakers, since my TV is wall mounted right above my computer setup, it works out good. One problem I've run into is this doesn't seem to work if your game switches resolutions from your primary monitor's desktop resolution, so use the same game resolution as your desktop resolution if you have problems, that may fix it.
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That would not work that well (for me). For example, my desktop on my 17" monitor is 1024 x 768. I play TF2 and L4D at 1600 x 1200. My 32" HDTV is set at 1360 x 768. On my dad's it would probably be even worse, as I'd want it to be as easy and seamless as possible for him. I'm going to go home and play around with some things...my PC that is.
 
Nenu said:
In Vista, both cards must be using the same driver as you cannot load 2 separate video drivers.
Therefore both cards must be from the same manufacturer in Vista.
Those rules do not apply to XP, you can have 2 different manufacturers cards.
Click to expand...

By manufacturer you mean ATI or nvidia, right? I meant to clarify that myself when I posted. You could have a Sapphire x1800 and MSI 2600pro or a eVGA9600GT and a PNY8400GS, just as an example, right?
 
Yes, you can only load an ATI driver or an NVidia driver in Vista, not both.
 
did the op ever mention which program he was using to play movies?

When I having trouble playing a movie when im gaming sometimes using VLC and switching to the opengl renderer does the trick. Or try using different media players.
 
Run the game in windowed mode at native resolution. It will work much better with watching a movie on the other monitor.
 
I tried all kinds of things (except Windowed mode) and the video goes out on the secondary monitor every time. I made sure it was set to multiple display performance mode. I'm running an 8800GTS 512.
 
winuser2000 gave my first suggestion. Make sure that the game is being played in window mode rather than full screen. My guess is the game is causing the movie to be minimized.

My other suggestion would be to try something like UltraMon. Might help.
 
^ It doesn't work either with UltraMon... at least not for me.

I am wondering if it has something to do with Vista turning off the things in the background, such as the sidebar, when ever you go full-screen with an application (in this case a game). Maybe its shutting Media Center down too. If so, than playing the game in a window might help.
 
Windowed mode isn't a good solution for me. In my case of doing it on my father's PC, it would be too complicated for him and my son to get the game into Windowed mode. And then why default it to Windowed mode when you'd only watch video and play a game 10% of the time that the PC is on? Maybe 2 PC's is the way to go like someone said.
 
Well, another way to do it as a PC and a DVD player... if the monitor has HDMI in or something the DVD player has an output for.
 
drew630 said:
^ It doesn't work either with UltraMon... at least not for me.

I am wondering if it has something to do with Vista turning off the things in the background, such as the sidebar, when ever you go full-screen with an application (in this case a game). Maybe its shutting Media Center down too. If so, than playing the game in a window might help.
Click to expand...

WMP or VLC should work, even if WMC does not.
 
winuser2000 said:
Run the game in windowed mode at native resolution. It will work much better with watching a movie on the other monitor.
Click to expand...

AHHH YESS!! That'll do it right there. The desktop resolution was only slightly different from the in game resolution and that cause the issue. The game he was testing (because the black 2nd monitor glitch was occuring with any game) did not actually support his desktop's resolution so no matter how hard he played with this settings it wasn't going to work (but Spore works and so that's mission accomplished:)). Didn't have to bother with windowed mode, the full-screen setting was fine. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
 
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