sdl remote desktop

Question

Hello,

for a simple demo program I am using the SDL library to play a mpeg movie file.

Unfortunately the demo app should be executed on one of our windows 7 servers and it should be looked at remotely.

The problem is, that when I connect via RDP to the server the SDL window stays black - although the movie becomes played (I hear the sound).

I guess this has something to do with the rendering device of OpenGL or DirectDraw when accessing via remote desktop. Does anyone know which settings I should use for setting up the SDL window so it works via RDP also?

When I play the movie with the windows media player the movie becomes displayed correctly - what kind of device uses the media player?

Thanks, Constantin

Answer 1

The problem is probably that SDL is rendering directly to video memory (or some sort of DirectDraw surface), but the RDP program is only able to retrieve what's in system memory.

If this is the case, there's a few things you can try. First is a different RDP program that has the ability to grab from DirectDraw or video memory. The other thing is when you call SDL_SetVideoMode() use the SDL_SWSURFACE flag. This will render to system memory where as SDL_HWSURFACE will render to video memory.