nVidia Forceware drivers for GeForce chips and full-screen overlay

[Matt Vanecek]

Not sure if this applies to Quadro or not. And this may have be beaten to death elsewhere (Internet search only turned up questions, not very many answers). But I submitted a question to nVidia support on the missing full-screen overlay setting. Below is the question/response. Just so's it may show up for somebody else's Internet search.

If anybody knows a way around this, I'd be interested to hear it...or if the ATI or other cards can be used for CUDA rendering...

Thanks,
Matt

Question:

Customer (Matt Vanecek) 04/11/2009 09:16 PM
Under Windows XP with a 6600GT, I could use my 2nd monitor for full-screen video overlays, as long as I used the older drivers (you guys took that out of the new drivers). Under Vista 64, the option is not present in the nVidia Control Panel to enable full-screen video on the 2nd monitor. The help files shipped with the nVidia drivers/software clearly states to select the modify full-screen settings, but that option is just not available. What's going on? Why did nVidia remove that capability from their drivers? How can I enable my 2nd monitor for full-screen video?

Response:

Response (Manuel G) 04/11/2009 10:42 PM
Hello Matt,
I am sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. The Full Screen Video Mirroring was removed for Windows XP and never implemented for Windows Vista due to issues with copy protected video files. At this moment, there are no plans to bring this feature back in a future driver.

Best Regards,
Manuel
NVIDIA Customer Care

[Adam Gold]

Yes, this has been beaten to death over in the Cineform forums. I got the same answer you did, which is no answer at all. NVidia is relying on the software to enable overlay, which Premiere does but Cineform removes.

We're out of luck unless we move to an ATI card.

[Heiko Saele]

Are you saying that Premiere CSx is able to do full screen video previews on the second monitor as if it was a real, video-only preview monitor? I didn't know that was possible, how do you enable it?

By the way I think nvidia's answer is pretty clear, they removed the function in the driver because it was enabling the copying of DRM protected video. It's like it always is with copy protection: it cripples software and hinders honest users while the pirates are already using another technique to copy stuff...

[Adam Gold]

Originally Posted by Heiko Saele

Are you saying that Premiere CSx is able to do full screen video previews on the second monitor as if it was a real, video-only preview monitor? I didn't know that was possible, how do you enable it?...

I can only speak for CS3, but yes. It's under Project > Settings > General > Playback Settings. I think. I'm not near my editing PC right now. Just mess with those settings until you get it to work.