Windowed games/videos tearing/no vsync

Is there a way to enable vsync when running games or movies in a window? I’ve been playing Terraria in a window, and it’s tearing something awful. I also notice that any movies I play in a window get tearing as well. Any advice?

This is on Win7 using a 6950 with the latest drivers.

You may want to try downloading D3DOverrider, which is a utility which forces D3D apps to use vsync. Since Win7’s UI uses some of the same code path as DirectX, this may affect windowed games. When I have it enabled, for example, I think it’s applied to my Windows Live Mail client window, as, oddly, is FRAPS.

There is not always anything you can do about movies though. Games are actually rendered differently when vsync is enabled to restrict to (generally) 30 or 60 FPS.

Whereas with video there is a fundamental disconnect between frame rate and the refresh rate of your monitor. Typically video (movies) are produced at either 23.976, 25 or 30 FPS, depending on what standard they are built to. If your monitor is 60Hz, the first two don’t divide evenly, so you will always get some amount of tearing. The best solution in this case is a monitor with a higher refresh rate. 100Hz is usually good because standards based frame rates divide into it with less error.

Note this was not an issue with older CRT technology due to way that technology worked (don’t ask me why!).