Hi everyone. Recently my PC has been refusing to let me use my old TV Tuner anymore. It's an old ATI TV Wonder VE, which used to work fine with MCE until about a week ago. For some reason everytime I try to use it, the programs say 'Video Overlay not available' or 'Device Already in Use.' I can 'temporarily' get it to work again by reinstalling the drivers, however after I reboot, the problem starts over again. Does anyone have a clue as to whats causing this? Something on start up must be overriding the drivers but I dont know what.

Nell -

Your drivers are probably fine, make sure to have the most recent, it is probably another process in your computer using the overlay.  Try to track down that process, and decide whether or not to allow it to run at startup.

D Wright

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David Wright

There are no new drivers for this tuner. The latest/only driver that works is from November of 2002. I have basically every non-essential service turned off for game performance. I don't know if thats what caused it, or maybe it had something to do with Windows Update. Either way it doesn't make sense how it works once I reinstall the driver (which I have to reboot in order to complete the process), but then after another reboot, it breaks. My other tuner which came with the PC, ATI Unified AVStream works just fine.

Nell -

Are you running two tuners in one machine then?  (1 ATI TV Wonder VE & 1 ATI Unified AVStream)
You say it worked up until a week ago, what updates did you install?

D Wright

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David Wright

These are the updates I most recently installed.

Windows XP	Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - July 2006 (KB890830)		Wednesday, July 12, 2006	Microsoft Update
Windows XP	Security Update for Windows XP (KB917159)		Wednesday, July 12, 2006	Microsoft Update
Windows XP	Security Update for Windows XP (KB914388)		Wednesday, July 12, 2006	Microsoft Update
Windows XP	Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework, Version 2.0 (KB917283)		Wednesday, July 12, 2006	Microsoft Update
Office 2003	Security Update for Excel 2003 (KB918419)		Wednesday, July 12, 2006	Microsoft Update
Office 2003	Security Update for Office 2003 (KB917151)		Wednesday, July 12, 2006	Microsoft Update
Office 2003	Security Update for Office 2003 (KB914455)		Wednesday, July 12, 2006	Microsoft Update
Office 2003	Update for Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB919031)		Wednesday, July 12, 2006	Microsoft Update
Windows XP	Update for Windows XP (KB916595)		Wednesday, July 12, 2006	Microsoft Update
Windows XP	Windows Genuine Advantage Notification (KB905474)		Tuesday, July 04, 2006	Microsoft Update

I also installed some new video editing software. Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere, and Adobe After Effects, but I can't imagine how software can effect a driver.

Just a thought, Adobe Premiere uses a video overlay for some of it's elements.  Maybe this is affecting your machine.  The updates you listed don't appear to be the cause of the problem.

D Wright

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David Wright

*sigh* I just uninstalled Adobe Premiere and it still doesn't work.. ,_,

 

Just uninstalled the other 3 programs, rebooted, now it seems to be working again. :)

Good to hear..

Try installing those programs one at a time, rebooting in between each one, and you should have your culprit program.  Just for interest, if you could post which program was causing the problem with the overlay.  Some other users out there might be having the same problem..

D Wright

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David Wright

I have no idea whats causing this. The problem started all over again, and theres no pattern. First I was 'about' to reinstall Vega, but Windows crashed and I had to reboot. When I did I checked my tuner 'before' installing Vegas an it wasn't working. So I rebooted again, tested it before installing, it was working. Then I went ahead and installed Vegas, it was still working until I rebooted. After another reboot, the tuner was busted yet again, 'Overlay not available' WinDVR keeps saying that. Other programs says its in use. So I uninstalled Vegas, still not working.. Rebooted, still not working..

This is starting to piss me off. Firstly I don't see how a program thats not even in use, override driver. Secondly, even after uninstalling those programs, its still not working. It makes no sense at all.

Just tried it one more time a few seconds after posting this. The tuner is working.. I wish I could say what the problem was and how I fixed it, but I just don't know.. Maybe it was Vegas.

You mention that you are receiving an error about the video overlay not being available, but then you are looking at your TV tuner card as the cause. That is a video display error, which your tuner card would have nothing to do with. It's surprising that you were able to get that tuner card to work at all since it's not a supported model with MCE 2005. Windows Media Center doesn't use the video overlay when displaying video, so most likely your other applications have conflicts.

The program that has been giving you the overlay error, WinDVR, what does that program do?

Sounds to me like something is running in the background and grabbing part of your tuner. when it's not working goto task manager and processes, end a process, try see if it works, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat etc. some processes will not close, don't kill explorer.exe thats the desktop. some will make your PC shut down. If you get a message saying PC is shutting down goto start, run and type shutdown -a to abort the shutdown.

just another thought, if it is a third party app that is giving that message then it is poss media center that is using the overlay.

I just woke up this morning and tested it again, fortunately its still working. I'm going to leave my PC as it is now and not bother reinstalling those programs, too much of a hastle. WinDVR is an old school TV Tuner app, I used it back in the day before MCE came out. It takes the best quality screenshots (to my knowledge), can record video, and doesn't use as many resources. I recommend it to anyone who has a TV Tuner and console system, its great for recording video game movies and screenshots.

Very strange, but at least it was working this morning.. 

D Wright

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David Wright

Hey guys, its me again. I know for a fact now that Sony Vegas was causing my overlay problem. However, I really like this software and I'm willing to compromise if I have to, to use it. I found this program called DScaler, which can access my old tuner with no problems. I decided to just use this program for recording, but its very stubborn and isn't very compatible with Vegas. Most of the formats I encode in, including uncompressed, won't open in Vegas, it'll recognize the sound but not the video. Anyway, right now all I really want to know is how can I overwright/disable Vegas' overlay feature, so I can go back to using WinDVR. Does anyone know a registry key or something for Vegas I can alter? Theres got to be a way around this. Maybe theres a codec/driver in Device Manager I can disable, but I don't know which one. Anyone have any ideas?

Why are you using another application to record from your tuner if this is all running on a Media Center PC? Uninstall the Dscaler and WinDVR programs and let MCE handle recording from the tuner. Since Media Center won't use your video card's overlay, the Sony Vegas application can make use of it when it needs to.