Introduction:

On this panel you will find tweaking features which are not relative to either OpenGL or Direct3D and don't fit on the main page.

Video Overlay Controls (Group-Box):

When NVIDIA cards have the resources to do so (sometimes restricted by resolution and color modes) they will open an overlay window to display movie sources (for example, opening an MPEG file in Media Player). The benefit of overlay windows is that they can do bilinear scaling of the source video (smooth stretching) and they can convert in hardware the various modes used to store video data (YUV to RGB is the most common use). These features of the overlay window remove 30%-50% of the CPU power required for these functions directly onto the card's hardware and thus frees quite a bit of CPU time for the actual decoding process.

Another benefit of the overlay window with regard to NVIDIA cards is it's ability to do color and brightness manipulation in hardware, allowing you to adjust the image to your liking without incurring another CPU hit.

Brightness (Slider):

By shifting the brightness slider and pressing the Apply Settings button, you can effect the brightness of the next overlay window to open.

Contrast (Slider):

By shifting the contrast slider and pressing the Apply Settings button, you can effect the contrast of the next overlay window to open.

Hue (Slider):

By shifting the hue slider and pressing the Apply Settings button, you can effect the hue of the next overlay window to open.

Saturation (Slider):

By shifting the saturation slider and pressing the Apply Settings button, you can effect the saturation (color wormth) of the next overlay window to open.

Overlay Mode (Slider):

The overlay mode slider can be adjusted to resolve conflicts with other cards that rely on overlay windows (DVD Decoder cards, TV Cards, etc...).

Enable overlay color controls (Check-Box):

The overlay color control dialog in the NVIDIA driver (and DC Genie's) can be disabled (and made to disappear in the NVIDIA control panel applet) by disabling this feature.

Reset (Button):

The reset button will reset the color controls and overlay mode to their default settings.