Screen Flashes when Video Plays

[jebert]

Hello,

I have had the same problem as another user on the board: Whenever a video is about to play, the entire screen briefly goes to black, giving the impression of a flicker. I tried changing WMP's defaults so that the player's background is white, but that didn't seem to help (and because the entire screen is affected, that wouldn't really solve the problem anyway: the black flash would only become white).

On each trial of a study, I want users to feel as though a static object suddenly moves toward or away from them. Because DirectRT can't control the playback of video (pause, play, etc.), I have tried to accomplish this by first displaying a BMP of the object, and then displaying a video of the object getting bigger or smaller. Because of the flicker, this illusion of sudden movement isn't as seemless as I'd like it to be. I've attached a zip file that contains a two-trial test program. Note the flash about 700 ms after pressing the spacebar.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!