The pixies have disabled my DirectDraw acceleration

[MuFu]

I’ve recently moved house and the HTPC + AV gear has moved too. When I set it all up in my new place I noticed that video playback had suddenly become jerky and that there was no overlay whatsoever in the DigiTV application. Setup below:

AXP 1800+
768MB
Radeon 9550 128MB
Sony Bravia KDL-32S2530 via VGA connection

WinXP
DX9.0c
Media Player Classic
ffdshow

The only thing that has changed is that I started using the secondary output (VGA) on the 9550 instead of using the primary DVI output with a DVI-VGA adapter. If I switch back to the primary output the problem persists.

The issue affects all DirectShow players so I checked dxdiag and noticed that DirectDraw Acceleration was listed as “Not Availableâ€￾.

Any ideas? I’ve done a clean install of Catalyst 6.12 (the version I have been using successfully for a couple of months) and will re-install DX tonight.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Sounds like you're suffering from an archaic OS, I'd upgrade to Vista and I bet all your problems will go away.











/me runs!!!!

 

[{Sniping}Waste]

Try rerunning DX9.0 installer. I have run into this in the past and this fix it.

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

Multi-monitor configuration is surprisingly awkward from the driver / gfx card point of view, as generally you only have one overlay, which can be blended with one or other of your output pipes, and deciding which one gets it can be awkward. Especially when you have both windows and drivers trying to control what monitors do what.

A couple of things to check (that I would consider unlikely, but worth checking).

Are you running at the same resolution/refresh that you were? Using a large overlay requires more DAC bandwidth, and this will scale with your resolution/refresh. As you can't refuse an overlay call once it is created you have to validate it at creation time based on worst case. Worst case for good quality scaling hardware is to downsample a large video to a small size. Most modern GFX cards should have ample bandwidth for overlays with most sensible display resolutions.

Check how you have told the drivers which monitor is primary. As I mentioned above there are several points at which the decision is made about what a primary output is. Fiddle about with the various display options. Try using a clone mode etc.

CC

 

[MuFu]

Thanks. I have my fingers crossed for the DX re-install but will try hooking up another display to see if at least one output has an active overlay at any one time.

 

[{Sniping}Waste]

Thanks. I have my fingers crossed for the DX re-install but will try hooking up another display to see if at least one output has an active overlay at any one time.

Make sure you uninstall the video drivers first be for running the DX install.

 

[poopypoo]

The answer is obvious: Black Francis noticed you pirated Come On Pilgrim again and sent Joey to break-a-ya-pc-kneecaps!

 

[MuFu]

Hmm... no luck on all suggestions (including {Sniping}Waste's). I've tried Cat 7.1s and gone back as far as Cat 6.3.

If I use the DVI output the hardware/software configuration is literally unchanged from before, so I wonder if this is a hardware issue. Stranger things have happened...

 

[stevem]

I'd have to agree with CC on this one. It seems like a primary/secondary display issue. Do you have D3D/OGL capability? Try connecting your display to the secondary output & boot in safe mode. Then extend the desktop & reset primary display to the primary port. I've had similar quirks the last few driver revisions as per the other thread. This is one of the symptoms.

 

[MuFu]

D3D acceleration is enabled and works ok, yup.

 

[afortes]

MUFU,

I have same problem as you.I'm going crazy with this directDraw "not available". reading this post i can see that it might have been due to a connection to a projector. Can you tell me please what was actually the steps you took to fix this problem?

thanks in advance...

 

[MuFu]

I eventually fixed this by remote desktopping into the machine with no monitors hooked up and doing a complete uninstall/re-install of DX and display drivers. Next time I booted the machine with the TV attached everything was fixed.