G400 DualHead: Green screen on TV out

[Spire]

I have been using the DualHead feature on my Millennium G400 for several months now without incident. However, yesterday, the card spontaneously developed a problem.

When I use DualHead DVDMax to display video output on my TV (via the composite video connector), I now frequently get "green screen" output: The TV displays a solid bright green screen for the entire duration of the playback. Stopping and then restarting the player program is the only way to "fix" the TV display and get the correct picture -- but only sometimes. All in all, the green screen happens approximately half the time. As a result, I usually have to restart the player several times before I can get the picture to appear.

This problem happens with any player that uses the hardware overlay to output video, including both the Matrox DVD Player and Windows Media Player. The problem never happened before yesterday. The reason for its appearance is a total mystery to me, as I made no hardware or software changes whatsoever to my system in the last few days.

I have no problems with the other DualHead features (Clone, Zoom, and Multi-Display). They all continue to work perfectly.

Here is my relevant system information:

- Powerdesk driver version 5.25.019
- Graphics BIOS version 1.5 - 22
- Bus type: AGP (set to 1x, and 2/3 FSB)
- Motherboard: ABIT BP6
- CPU: Celeron, 466MHz (not overclocked)
- Operating system: Windows 98 SE

The G400 is using IRQ11, and not sharing with any other device. (PCI slot 1 contains a Voodoo2 card, which doesn't use an IRQ.)

I have tried completely removing and reinstalling the PowerDesk driver, but the problem persists.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Or does anyone have any suggestions on how I might fix it? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me, as watching movies is becoming very frustrating for me!

[whiplash]

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem with the 'green' screen. Just like you mine seemed to just suddenly start happening. When playing DVD,(DVDMAx),I have to press 'R' for the root menu and select the first chapter then the screen on the TV seems to re-initialise and put itself right.

I have been in contact with Tech support via compuserver, (go Matrox), they are looking into the problem with the DVD player people.

Do you also have the symtom of the DVD 'skipping' the intro when it starts ?.

If you manage to solve the problem before me then please let me know and I will do the same..

[Spire]

Whiplash,

Thanks for your reply. It's comforting to know I'm not the only one experiencing this problem.

I don't think it's a player-specific problem, as it happens with any video player that outputs to the hardware overlay (at least in my case). Rather, it seems to be a problem with DVDMax itself; it appears to be randomly failing to properly initialize the NTSC-out hardware.

What do you mean by the DVD "skipping" the intro? The Matrox/Cinemaster player has a feature that automatically resumes the last disc you played at the point that you stopped it. Is this what you're referring to? Or are you experiencing a different problem? Please elaborate.

[whiplash]

Spire,

I did not know the Matrox DVD palyer,(cinemaster had the ability to resume where you last finished playing the DVD, this is what I must be seeing, where is this setting ?).

I hope you did not mind but I posted a copy of you problem to the compuserve support area to give them a bit more information here is a copy of the latest reply..

>>>Hi,

It is normal to get the green screen until the DVD kicks in since there are no signal to the monitor until that time.. (and for some reason this will give you a green or pink TV until it start (looks as if you were lucky not to get pink at least ;-)

If you let the DVD play on, does it stay green, meaning that it will never be ok until you select menu?

Small things to check in the PC for optimal performance or what could create additionnal problems would be :
- be sure to have the latest LiveWare 2.1 for your SBLIVE card.
- try putting your desktop to 16 bit
- be sure that the card is not sharing it's IRQ and that no cards are located in PCI slot 1 (since it shares ressources with teh AGP most of the time...)


Let me know if some of these help or if the problem seem to be related to the known issue I was telling you about.

Best Regards

Alex
MGI Tech Support<<<<<


I will keep you posted if I hear anymore..

[whiplash]

Spire,

I have another e-mail from Tech support, looks like we are getting closer..

>>>>>We are indeed looking into this right now to see what may cause it. Have you tried without the voodoo card? Can you also tell me if you are using windows 98 SE? ONe thing you might try is to force the card in 1X and see if the problem still occurs. If soi, I might have a fix for you.

Regards

Alex
MGI Tech Support<<<<<<

Cheers..

[Spire]

Whiplash,

1. The auto-resume feature on the Cinemaster/Matrox DVD Player is automatic, and AFAIK cannot be disabled.

2. Yes, the picture stays green indefinitely if I let the DVD play on.

3. I'm already using LiveWare 2.1. I haven't tried setting my desktop color depth to 16-bit (although for what it's worth, 32-bit used to work perfectly). The G400 is not sharing an IRQ.

4. I've tried removing the Voodoo2 card from PCI slot 1. Even with no card in that slot, and the problem still persists.

5. Yes, I'm using Windows 98 SE.

6. The G400 is currently (and has always been) forced to AGP1x, since it is extremely unstable (random crashes) otherwise.

Thanks for relaying my problem to the Compuserve forum. I'd really like to get to the bottom of this, as it's really starting to drive me crazy!

[whiplash]

Spire,

Good news, FIXED IT !.. no more green screens .

Matrox tech support kept telling me it was a bad signal to the T.V, so I looked around for a utility which would alow me to mess around with the advanced properties of Cinemaster. (In the hope it would work with the Matrox version).

I found DVD region selector 1.96 from www.dvdutils.com. Click on the Ati/Cinemaster tab, then select the ‘more’ tab for extra options, in here go to the ‘surface flip mode’ pull down window. I changed mine to DDFLIP -Even interleaved. It immediately solved the problem. I could repeat the problem by setting it back again, so this must be the answer.

By the way the one setting which did not work was Overlay/Rivra128/Matrox ? figure that one out.

Anyway see if it works for you, remember I am in the UK using PAL, so you may need a different setting. If it does not work for you. Let me know and I will use Norton registry tracker to find out which registry settings are affected