WMP - Visualisations when fullscreen (1 Viewer)

bigj

Portal Pro
January 10, 2005
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I dusted off my mpviz code the weekend - this is a test visualisation I wrote a while back for WMP.

I took another look at the paths taken during rendering - trying to understand why MP fullscreen is slow.
There are two paths supported in the viz as I've written it:

a) GetDC/GDI bitblt D3D texture to HDC.
b) Native D3D present (either fullscreen flipped or windowed-copy).

I believe MP is taking path a) - I need to check, not at dev PC right now, but the fact it scales so badly with resolution indicates it's not accelerated.
The GetDC/BitBlt is not a good path, I added it for completeness - interestingly, WMP - as a standalone player - only takes this path when using non-square (as in 'masked') skins. These tend to be small views so work fine.

My interest in writing a Viz in the first place was to experiment with a fully accelerated implementation - using D3D/pixel shaders should allow hi-res and high-fps visualisation. Longer term I was hoping to have something usable with MediaPortal which is why I'm pursuing this here.

Some numbers from memory:

MP:
Minimised window = 25fps
Maximised window (X) = 8fps
(path a suspect - To be confirmed)

WMP:
Fullscreen (path b) 60fps - capped by vsync so possibly much more.

Is there anyway of ensuring the code use b)...?

...I see there is a player.fullscreen member for embedded WMP.
Is or can this be set when moving to fullscreen?
Also the MP GUI system should be disabled to prevent any unecessary overdraw or negative interaction.

I'd have a go myself but I'm no C#/.net programmer - at least I don't have the required tools. Is there a 'freeware' route to compiling the source?

Regards,
BigJ.
 

FlipGer

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  • April 27, 2004
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    Hi,

    this sounds like an interesting point! Thanks for looking into it. :)

    You might also try to contact the developers via IRC. Frodo is currently on vacation, but IRC should be the right place to get someone to question specific MP coding things.

    Flip.
     

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