xv overlay - cinema mode

[Wesley S.]

2007/3/22, Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach at gmx.de>:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 05:41:33PM +0100, Wesley S. wrote:
> > 2007/3/22, Alex Deucher <alexdeucher at gmail.com>:
> > >On 3/22/07, Wesley S. <profox at ubuntu-nl.org> wrote:
>
> >>> Is it possible to use xv overlay to play a movie fullscreen on my
> >>> TV, but windowed on my computer? (or even minimized on my
> >>> computer)
>
> >> Just set up dualhead and play the video on one head while you work on
> >> the other.  That's all the "cinema" mode does I suspect.
>
> > Thanks for your answer, Alex. But unfortunately this is not what I
> > am looking for.  It's a workaround, but not a real solution for me.
>
> Why is it a workaround? As long as you get the movie fullscreen on
> the TV, and windowed on your computer as you wanted, it shouldn't matter
> how the hardware does it.

Well, if I set up dualhead and play the video on one head (TV) and do
other things on the other head (computer) I won't see the video
windowed on my computer, or am I missing something here

> > I am pretty sure that I won't have much chance of finding this functionality
> > in linux, because I have already looked everywhere, and I found it nowhere.
> > So this is sort of my last try. But hey, if it doesn't work, I'll just keep
> > using the dualhead option. It's not as nice as theatre mode, but it's
> > workable..
>
> Why is it not as nice? There should be no difference. Or is the problem
> that the screen size on your TV is not as you would like it?

Same reason as above. I won't see the video windowed on my computer,
only fullscreen on TV, atleast that's what I thought.

> > All this stuff brings me to a new question though. How hard would it be to
> > do this through software? Wouldn't the computer be able to copy the contents
> > of a playing video on screen 1 to screen 2?
>
> I'd say that's exactly what the computer does, no matter if you call it
> "Theatre Mode", "Cinema Mode", or "Video Mirroring" :-)

I agree that the naming doesn't matter ;) but I just don't understand
how I can make the software copy the contents of a playing video on
screen 1 (computer) to screen 2 (TV) You make it sound like it's
nothing... Am I missing something?

Thanks for your answer though.

2007/3/22, Alex Deucher <alexdeucher at gmail.com>:
> CRTCs are the part of the video chip that controls the timing and part
> of the frambuffer that gets sent to an output.
> [ ... ]

Thanks for the explanation, Alex!

> Since hardware usually only has one overlay, you could only
> do HW scaling and colorspace conversion on one output.  So:
> 1. set up dualhead (with or without xinerama)
> 2. hack you video app to output to two buffers (one on :0.0 and one on
> :0.1 if no xinerama)

It sounds very interesting and I'd like to try it out, but I have no
idea how I would do this. Sure, I have programmed before, but this is
something completely different. If you can point me to documentation I
might need to hack the video app (mplayer in my case) I'd be very
happy... I will try to do something.. eventhough I have never messed
around with video output drivers before. I'm not even sure where to
start. Would I try to hack the video output driver I am using (xv in
my case) ? I'm afraid that this is a bit over my head.

-- 
Wesley Stessens <profox at ubuntu-nl.org>
Human Knowledge Belongs To The World - Antitrust (2001)
http://wesley.debianbox.be