This is a bit obscure, but it may help you with other similar problems you may have with Vista.  I was filming an interview for a testimony video last night and ran in to some problems with DVRack.  A couple months ago I purchased a new laptop, which of course came pre-loaded with Vista.  I had installed DVRack on the laptop and verified that the program opened, but never actually used it to capture any video yet.

So of course I get “on the set” and expect that DVRack will perform beautifully like it always has.  But when I connect up the camera and launch the application no video is displayed in the preview monitor.  The waveform and vectorscope both show that they are receiving signal.  I even recorded a clip, ejected it and played it back in WMM and everything was recorded fine, just no video display in the monitor!  Well, I got through the interview fine having to use the camera’s viewfinder to compose the shots.  Today I did a little hunting for the solution to the problem and found out it’s a pretty easy fix.

It appears that Vista’s Aero interface doesn’t provide for hardware overlay of video.  (Which of course is what DVRack is trying to do with it’s preview monitor.)  So the solution is to disable Aero when you launch DVRack.  This turns out to be pretty simple.

1. Right-click on the short-cut for the application and choose Properties.
2. In the Compatibility tab under the Settings section, put a check next to “Disable desktop composition.”

Worked like a charm.  The preview monitor in DVRack now displays video just like it should.  And that is how you can disable Aero on a per application basis for any application that requires video overlay.