Video Overlay "Corrupted"

[Cuppojoe]

This is a problem I have noticed in the last 2 weeks (during which time I do not believe I installed any new software): When watching any type of video, the overlay image created is streaked from top to bottom with lines of green and black dots. This occurs with all players I have installed (WMP, VLC, TCMP). When I go into the advanced performance options of WMP and select "Use High Quality Mode" for video rendering, the problem disappears.

The picture quality under this setting is not as high as I was previously able to achieve using overlay.

Does anyone know what may have happened, and what I can do to correct this problem (short of a full re-install of Windows)?

WMP10
DirectX 9.0c
Nvidia GeForce4 420MX
Forceware 93.71
ffdshow (rev646)
XviD 1.1.2

[jagabo]

WMP10's "High Quality Mode" bypasses video overlay. So everything points to a problem with overlay.

Sometimes just disabling and reenabling overlay fixes this type of problem. Dig through your graphic card's drivers and look for overlay settings. Start at Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced. From there it varies with the card and driver.

[Cuppojoe]

WMP10's "High Quality Mode" bypasses video overlay. So everything points to a problem with overlay.

Sometimes just disabling and reenabling overlay fixes this type of problem. Dig through your graphic card's drivers and look for overlay settings. Start at Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced. From there it varies with the card and driver.

This is what I thought as well. I've tried to look at the overlay settings of my card, but all I can do is adjust hue, saturation, etc. If the overlay is "corrupted" (sorry if I'm using th wrong terminology here), is there any way of "repairing" it?

[jagabo]

Play a video with two different players at the same time. One will get overlay, the other won't. If the first one has a corrupt picture and the second one doesn't you'll know overlay is the problem.

Since your driver doesn't seem to have an explicit overlay enable/disable settings go to the Troubleshoot tab on the Advanced Settings dialog. Try turning hardware acceleration all the way down and press Apply (you may have to reboot). This will disable overlay. See if the video plays properly. Then bump it back up and try again.

You can try udating to the latest WHQL certified drivers for your graphics card.

[Cuppojoe]

Thanks. I've been down the road this far already.
I have the latest WHQL drivers for the card, I have already isolated overlay as the problem, and I have even uninstalled my graphics card completely and reinstalled it. I still can't get the overlay to work correctly.
What bothers me most is that everything was working fine up until about 2 weeks ago.

[jagabo]

The last thing I can think of is to try reducing the desktop resolution and frame rate. See if that makes any difference.

It sounds like you have a hardware problem though.

[Bjs]

The only way to acurately pin point the problem is to put any effected clip onto cd ... and take the clip to another pc and see how it performs .

If it works fine ... correct codecs installed ... ect ... then

I'll ask this one first :

Do you have any cards installed in pci1 underneath the addon video adapter ... yes or no .

If yes ... get rid of the pci card now ... system conflict caused by shared resources (onboard vid / agp slot / pci1 share resources ... only "1" may be used) ... onboard is usually disabled by the bios so as not to conflict with addon agp .

If no ... moving on ...

Your pc either has :

1: Harware failure ... video adapter malfunction .
2: System file corruption ... might even be registry corruption related , which happens more often than one could poke a stick at .

In the case of the first ... replace but before this I recommend the following ...

Corrupted registry :

There is one method where the registry hive's can be repaired quickly , and might just resolve the issue :

http://www.theeldergeek.com/windows_xp_registry.htm

In order for this to be successful , you must reboot the pc everytime you perform this function ... otherwise it dosent work .

In the event , that the video adapter is not at fault , and the registry backups have had no affect ... it's a clean reinstall time ... backup downloads , internet fav's , dialup details , download manager links , and under your normal account is a hidden system folder containing your email stuff .

Windows explorer , tool's , folder options , sellect view , unhide folders , then down below are two options to hide system files , uncheck them ... hit apply , then ok .

Go to documents and settings , normal user account by name , local settings , application data , identities ... open all folders here till you reach outlook express's folder ... zip this folder up .

To restore this data form outlook express without loss ... after reinstalling os , and dialup / or other account , and added email account info to outlook express ... it will generate a new id folder string ... simply unpack the zipped up outlook express data back here ... and you have lost nothing .

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The problem with system file corruption is that it can become so deeply embeded in the system , that no amount of tweak's or repair's will work and stay stable 100%

A clean reinstall is the only method for a 100% cure for this problem .

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When uninstalling hardware drivers ... the pc must be rebooted .

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Beware of ms update's ... I have had a few mess my system about in the last 12 month's .

I have noticed that wga thing has not made an appearance in some time ... I reported to ms about wpa deleting all prior system restore point's ... nasty trick that prevented user's from restoring the pc to "as new install" condition .

While they were quite right to install wpa ... they had no right's to affect user's by deleting neccessary restore point's , should a trojan , virus , or other become embeded into the system ... I normally as a last resort prior to reinstall , roll back the system , and then attempt the removal of such problem's .

Ms could have been sued into non-existence because of that wga stunt ...

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Also ... before doing anything I have said above ... "get rid of ffdshow" ... and try playback again .