Video issue when GPS is active

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paul1965
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Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 3:21 am

Video issue when GPS is active

Post by paul1965 »

As I had mentioned early on in an email, I like to have my screensaver run in the background and keep a small video window open on top of it, especially when I want to watch TV but don't really care what's on. I've done that successfully for years using various screensavers including those built into Windows and those that aren't (not sure if I should mention the name of one or not). It works great on my HTPC that's connected to a 55" LED TV. However, since purchasing and installing GPS Pro I have major issues with the video quality. It doesn't matter what type of GPS screensaver I'm running, the video playback, whether it's live TV using WMC or watching a movie using VLC is choppy and pixelated to the point where it's not watchable (I've tested this on 2 different W8.1 machines). I have to either shut off the screensaver or switch to a different one before I can resume watching anything.

I know you mentioned that by default GPS is meant to be always on top so I'm not sure if there's anything that can be done to fix this issue, but I had to at least post my issue and see what your thoughts are.
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gpb
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Re: Video issue when GPS is active

Post by gpb »

I am not sure I understand your problem. Do you mean that when gPhotoShow is running the video output from third party programs is not very good ?
It's hard to give any suggestion but it seems the issue is caused some kind of hardware limit has been reached.
gPhotoShow is not light program in particular when running on multiple monitor and using Pan&Zoom. It may take a good amount of system resources, 10-20% of cpu usage is rather normal, hard disk is busy because gPhotoShow is continuosly loading images and DirectX is also keeping the GPU busy. Under these conditions you should have a powerful hardware or hardware assisted video decoding to keep a smooth video output.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
paul1965
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Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 3:21 am

Re: Video issue when GPS is active

Post by paul1965 »

gpb wrote:I am not sure I understand your problem. Do you mean that when gPhotoShow is running the video output from third party programs is not very good ?
It's hard to give any suggestion but it seems the issue is caused some kind of hardware limit has been reached.
gPhotoShow is not light program in particular when running on multiple monitor and using Pan&Zoom. It may take a good amount of system resources, 10-20% of cpu usage is rather normal, hard disk is busy because gPhotoShow is continuosly loading images and DirectX is also keeping the GPU busy. Under these conditions you should have a powerful hardware or hardware assisted video decoding to keep a smooth video output.
Yes, when GPS is running the video output is not very good and I don't have this issue with other brands of screensavers. However I wouldn't restrict it to just 3rd party applications since WMC is an OE product.

My HTPC runs a dual core E6500 CPU at 2.93 GHz, with 8 GB of DDR3, a GeForce 210 video card and 64 bit W8.1. I've also tested this on my newest machine running a Core i3 4150 CPU at 3.50 GHz and 16 GB of DDR3 with the same results. When GPS is running it's at only 5% CPU. If I start WMC, it takes about 10% CPU, but GPS doesn't change. All told under normal conditions my CPU usage is only around 20%, and I see nothing unusual happening other than the poor video performance.
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gpb
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Re: Video issue when GPS is active

Post by gpb »

Unfortunately I can't help you with this issue.
As I wrote when using Pan&Zoom gPhotoShow actively uses DirectX and I don't know which impact it can have on any other application (including windows media player).
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
paul1965
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Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 3:21 am

Re: Video issue when GPS is active

Post by paul1965 »

gpb wrote:Unfortunately I can't help you with this issue.
As I wrote when using Pan&Zoom gPhotoShow actively uses DirectX and I don't know which impact it can have on any other application (including windows media player).
I understand, but this happens with Photowall too.
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gpb
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Re: Video issue when GPS is active

Post by gpb »

Photowall works in the same way as pan&zoom. DirectX is updating the screen continuously, you should try standard transitions that don't use DirectX
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
paul1965
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Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 3:21 am

Re: Video issue when GPS is active

Post by paul1965 »

gpb wrote:Photowall works in the same way as pan&zoom. DirectX is updating the screen continuously, you should try standard transitions that don't use DirectX
Switching to 2D did resolve my issue. And not sure why I thought Photowall didn't use DirectX, the editor clearly shows it does.
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