Problem with playing two videos

vvvv beta question
1

Hi, we are developing a video installation, where we need to play videos on two separate displays (we were promised two plasma screen) We are playing it from one computer.
We’ve developed an application in vvvv, that is working just fine on one screen (if you minimize the video window)

We put each video on to it’s own monitor (we’re using windows extended desktop). No problems there.
When we try to maximize both windows, computer crashes.

I have following questions:

  1. Do we need to upgrade our computer? Components are:
  • athlon 64 3500+
    -512 MB RAM
    -nvidia GeForce 6600 GT (128 MB)
  • win XP , directX 9

Which part of the computer is the weakest ? I’d say we need a new graphics card, but hardware isn’t exactly my field. We were testing it on a newer computer (graphic card: ati mobility radeon hd 2600, 1 GB RAM, it had some problems, but worked we just needed to resize the windows in the order he liked  )
If the problem lies in the card which one do you recommend (we need two output)

  1. Could the problem lie in video codec ?
    -Currently we’re testing with avi codec. I realize it’s the biggest, but the videos aren’t that big. Let’s say around 4MB for 4 seconds. Is that too much to handle ? 1 MB /s ? Where is the limit

3)Are there any issues with xp extended desktop ?

We’ll be vey grateful for any suggestions.

2

i’d say it’s either the usual trouble with extended desktops.

try span mode - to be found in the nvidia-config.
there’s some problem with 3d acceleration on both heads of the gfx card.
read the av documentation, there’s more about it

the other problem could be the codec that you use. I had crashes when playing two wmv9 encoded videos simultaneously.

your components look all right this kind of setup

3

v4 will crash sometimes if you go to fullscreen while the videos running…
did you try to: pause the videos - go fullscreen - play the videos again?

the videos should also has the same codec / framerate.
and the 2nd screen should have the same resolution as the first.

4

Thanks for the advice.

The first one (span node) didn’t work. I’m not sure if we know how to use it.

We solved the problem by lowering the quality of the video (converted it to mpg).
We also had some flickering (video garbage) on the primary screen.
We resolved the problem by setting the Wait for every nth frame pin
of the VideoTexture node to 2.This basicly means we only display every second frame.
We combined that with the second advice(pausing the videos)