Blanking client screen? / Selecting best compression?

[idontlikeregistering]

I'm running one comp as some kind of HTPC. To avoid the hassle of a mouse and a keyboard laying around, I use VNC from my laptop to control the HTPC. However, when I play high-res movies, the CPU load on the HTPC from playing the movie *and* compressing and sending VNC screen data to the laptop causes playback to lag.

My current workaround is to close the VNC connection. Works fine, but it's annoying when only playing short hi-res clips.

I guess selecting "the right" compression method for the graphics would help, but I think it would be difficult to find one that doesn't load the HTPC CPU but still flows decently over "100 Mbps" network.

So, ideally, I'd like to just click a toolbar button and blank the client screen and stop the server from sending graphics. I know you can blank the server display, but is it possible to do what I want?

[redge]

solution,

special thank to developers users: [user=6188][/user] and [user=5691][/user]
who are optimized the code with news features and some fix.
http://rt87.byethost14.com/

UltraVNC 1.0.2 optimized by roytam1 and KP774
ICL build of UltraVNC 1.0.2(CVS, with MiniLZO 2.0.2/IJG's SIMD JPEG codec/ZYWRLE, New MSLogon, with KP774's patches, FSTitleBar Hack, Sizable FT Window)

I hope would be added to the official build of UltraVNC 1.0.4
"ZYWRLE":Enhanced VNC codec for Motion picture
http://mobile.hitachi-system.co.jp/publications/ZYWRLE/

not yet available to 1.0.4RC4 at this day
[topic=9167][/topic]

[mcf747]

When I run my media center it does the same thing I was playing around with the settings last night (lucky for you) and wondered into the properties screen and checked "Share only the server Window Named:" and then typed in the name for me "Media Center" and maybe for you "Windows Media Player" and believe it or not it actually did the exact opposite thing (blocked the video) and sped up my speed when i was playing video with my media center. Maybe its a fluke or an error in the code but whatever it is I should work for you if it is in the code and not just a flue with my computer. i am running th latest version of VNC just downloaded the new on 3 days ago and have no add-ons and have not modified the code.

-Matthew

[YY]

So, ideally, I'd like to just click a toolbar button and blank the client screen and stop the server from sending graphics. I know you can blank the server display, but is it possible to do what I want?

Have you tried just minimise the viewer window at your laptop?

Under the UVNC operation, the viewer is the active party to ask the server to send the frame. When it is minimised, it will stop the request and the server will not transmit the screen any more, thus can save a lot of CPU power for playing the movie.

[idontlikeregistering]

I get an improvement, albeit a small one, from running the modification suggested by redge. It doesn't fully solve my problem, but it does move the maximum no-lag bitrate slightly higher.

mcf747's suggestion doesn't do anything for me. It seems UVNC doesn't want to remember the setting, because every time I change that "share only..." setting, it's still blank when I return to that dialog. Might have something to do with running UVNC as a service? (i've had problems with other settings not changing since making it a service)

YY's suggestion seemed really promising. But it doesn't affect performance noticably.

So, I'm still looking for more tips.