Hardware Preview Overlay in Expanded Mode

[Curley]

I'm running a DVStorm and a Geforce4 Ti4600 with dual monitors and when I bring up Adobe Premiere and try to play a timeline, the program freezes. If I lower the resolution to 1024x768, then it will play, but only on the main monitor while the second monitor goes black. I think I need a card that can play two mpeg files on each monitor.????

I called NVIDIA and they do not support Hardware Preview Overlay on dual monitors when in spanned mode.

Does anyone know of a card that supports this feature???? Matrox, ATI, 3DLABS?????

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Matrox's G450 does this as good as any card that I've used, though I do run into a color depth/resolution limitation that may be caused by the amount of RAM. Supposedly the Parhelia has improved on this area a bit, however no review that I can find anywhere has ever tested overlay performance. (on any cards)

 

[Curley]

Ja,

I've used a G450 and it doesn't support it either, I've had worse luck with the G450, in After Affects, you can't drag between monitors in spanned mode but the Geforce does, it just doesn't support the Hardware Overlay in spanned mode.

I was just reading up on the Parhelia, it doesn't support Hardware Overlay in Triple head mode but says it does in Dual Head mode because the two outside heads are independent of each other. The problem is they still have to tie in when two different MPEG or AVI are playing. It looks promising and I will give it a try and return it if it won't work.

Thanks for the tip on the Parhelia.

 

[Curley]

Wow, the ATI Radeon 8500LE just stomps all over the NVIDIA Ti series when it comes to options. The ATI runs excellent in Harware Preview Overlay in spanned mode, and on top of that has a toggle to save this setting for each selective application that is run. I talked to the Techs at Adobe and they say that NVIDIA won't budge on supporting this feature because it would require some intricate and specialized drivers. NVIDIA may specialize in one thing but ATI seems to focus on all aspects of a video card. Too bad for NVIDIA, although I am a small DV machine builder, I am eliminating the Geforce from the configuration.

Anyway, everything works great now, thanks to ATI.