Trying to clone displays

3D Jed said:

Just to confuse things - anyone else notice that the OP's YouTube was in 1440p HD ? See attachment screenshot

1920 * 1440 is 4:3 but . . . I thought his 4:3 was 1600 . . .

My guess is a bug in Catalyst Control Center, uncovered by the two different screen resolutions.

What's shown in the upper part ("panel information") of the "attributes" presentation is the MAXIMUM reported by the display, not the actual resolution currently in effect. In fact the actual resolution currently in effect is [theoretically] shown in the "display area" of "Displays manager" -> "Displays properties".

So the "display area" claims 1600x1200 in XP clone mode, whereas you've observed the YouTube video was 1440. In my mind, 1440 matches what was shown as the maximum possible clone mode resolution (i.e. 1440x900) in Win7. And this makes sense because 1200 is unacceptable as a vertical resolution value on the Vizio where max resolution is 1920x1080.

So, Win7 and Catalyst Control Center resolved the conflict by limiting max "clone" mode resolution to 1440x900. I suspect WinXP did the same, but there is simply a flaw in Catalyst Control Center showing the current "clone" mode resolution as 1600x1200 which clearly is impossible and incorrect (in my mind, anyway). The YouTube video confirms.


Also note the other oddity I observed, that the WinXP desktop left edge shows 15 rows of shortcut icons, whereas the Vizio desktop only shows 12. ZOOM mode on the Vizio? Some other problem with "clone" mode in XP when using two different shaped screens??

[QUOTE=rmike1991;2733826]

Kari said:

Why is it so important you must have the movie showing on both displays

Because when I edit movies/videos I like my mouse to be on the computer desktop in front of my eyes where the editing program is and not on TV even though it's in the same room. I can always turn my head or even come closer to the TV to see how the borders etc look like on 16:9 but not going there with the mouse :)

Another inconsistency is that the OP likes the mouse to be just on 1 display not both. In clone mode the mouse appears on both monitors, in extend mode the mouse is only on 1 monitor at a time. Maybe the OP actually needs extend mode.

Kari said:

Only intelligent solution, judging by everything OP has told, would be to use extended mode: Edit the video on PC monitor (display 1), run the edited movie on TV (display 2).

When editing video, preserving aspect ratio is the #1 priority. Forcing cloned monitors' pixels to adopt wrong values could easily result in the final output being distorted.

The next post will be 'why are my movies stretched ? looked fine in the editor'. YouTube is full of people with wide faces (and plenty of very tall thin dudes).

When editing video, preserving aspect ratio is the #1 priority

Kari said:

It is a very bad video editor if it does not allow working on a 16:9 video on a 4:3 display. Not valid point, if you ask me. Simple Windows Live Movie Maker allows you to select the aspect ratio for your video, regardless of the aspect ratio of your display.

What I meant was - often people 'eyeball' stuff when editing video to get the dimensions right. If I have several clips from different sources (eg anamorphic + square pixel) in one composition I look for circular objects (clocks etc) to check things are in shape. If the OP edits video on a distorted monitor, things that appear circular might turn out oval when watched on a regular (non distorted) TV. Sorry for the thread hijack - AR is one of my obsessions eg 4:3 vids stretched to 16:9. YouTube has millions of examples.

dsperber said:

If you look at your XP Desk TV video, you'll notice that on the left edge of your WinXP desktop on the Lenovo monitor there are 15 rows of shortcut icons, with the top row having 5 and the bottom row having 1. Now look at the Vizio screen later in the same video. Note that there are only 12 rows of shortcut icons, with the top row having 3 and the bottom row having 2. So the Vizio presentation in "clone" mode on XP has chopped off the top and bottom of what is simultaneously visible on the lenovo monitor. I don't know if this is being caused by some ZOOM MODE you might have active at this moment on the Vizio HDTV (which seems likely to me as the only plausible explanation), or some other additional oddity anomaly in the XP Catalyst driver and "clone" mode with different screen sizes.

You are absolutely right. It was a ZOOM MODE. Now I made a video (XP OS) where you can see different modes (Zoom-Panoramic-Normal-Wide) on TV and how the desktop looks on it. Please look closely at the Normal mode. I know it’s not possible, but you’ll see the complete desktop (1600X1200) on TV (1920X1080). The reason I keep my TV in the Zoom mode is because any other mode would not show the correct picture. As for the desktop itself – I don’t care if it’s not showing in full on TV screen because I only use “clone” for the movies. And as long as I have the normal (1600X1200) resolution on my desktop and the movie is scaled to full screen on TV – I’m fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKr7mTzRPnE

dsperber said:

So... how about CHECKING the boxes in Win7, to match how you have it in WinXP?? You say "if I check it there things get ugly", but I'd like to see what you mean... in another video please??

Here it is. What I meant by “ugly” is that the resolution on the monitor is different from 1600X1200 and everything is stretched vertically. You’ll see that in the video. I have no problem with the way it looks on TV. My problem is that I can’t keep 1600X1200 resolution on the monitor. If I could only do that, everything would be PERFECT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZliCAles_8

Your latest video (taken in XP) that shows "NORMAL" mode (producing the black bars on left and right of the 4:3 image in the center) demonstrates as I would expect that without any TV-added ZOOM to alter what is being sent to the TV, the actual image presented on the TV is the same 4:3 aspect ratio as we see on the CRT.

What we don't really know is whether this image is 1600x1200 (which I would have thought to be IMPOSSIBLE to display on the 1920x1080 TV, unless the TV does its own "vertical compression" which I don't know without looking at the manual) or 1440x900 (as Windows 7 seems to force as the max possible) or maybe 1440x1080 (which is truly 4x3) or what.

Does your TV have a "display" button on the remote which presents an onscreen info bar showing the input resolution it's being sent? That would be very helpful, to actually see what the PC is sending to the TV in both WinXP and Win7.

Now I am very bothered by the fact that you have two very different setups in CCC for WinXP and Win7. You have your WinXP setup with the "scale image to full panel size" CHECKED on both CRT and TV. And for Win7 you say you have this option UN-CHECKED! That is a very significant difference, and you confirm very different results in Win7 when you do CHECK that option. You say that forces a switch to 1440x900 from what you believe to be 1600x1200, which is why I'm puzzled that in WinXP having the options CHECKED puts out what claims to be 1600x1200, which is not what gets put out in Win7 with the same options CHECKED.

I can't explain the seemingly opposite (or at least different) behavior under WinXP vs. Win7 with the same options checked, and I don't really know which one is "right". I also don't know how your TV works, but can't imagine that there is an acceptable 1600x1200 resolution it will accept when in Win7 it reports max of 1440x900 (which is why that is the largest value selectable in "clone mode" on Win7). It's vertical height is 1080, so 1200 cannot be displayed.

I still would sure like you to be using CURRENT DRIVERS and CURRENT CATALYST CONTROL CENTER in Win7, instead of software from 3-4 years ago.

And I'd sure like to know what the "display" button on the TV's remote shows onscreen as the input resolution being received from the TV.

dsperber said:

Your latest video (taken in XP) that shows "NORMAL" mode (producing the black bars on left and right of the 4:3 image in the center) demonstrates as I would expect that without any TV-added ZOOM to alter what is being sent to the TV, the actual image presented on the TV is the same 4:3 aspect ratio as we see on the CRT.

Correct.

dsperber said:

What we don't really know is whether this image is 1600x1200 (which I would have thought to be IMPOSSIBLE to display on the 1920x1080 TV

My guess is that “Scale image to full panel size” checked resizes that 1200 to fit into 1080. Obviously it fits.

dsperber said:

Does your TV have a "display" button on the remote which presents an onscreen info bar showing the input resolution it's being sent? That would be very helpful, to actually see what the PC is sending to the TV in both WinXP and Win7.

dsperber said:

You say that forces a switch to 1440x900 from what you believe to be 1600x1200

No. This is not what I say. I say that Windows 7 forces a switch to 1440x900 from 1600x1200 on my monitor and keeps it that way in the clone/duplicate mode (I loose 1600X1200 on my monitor). And this is the only problem that I have.

dsperber said:

It's vertical height is 1080, so 1200 cannot be displayed.

Let’s try this. You have a king size pillow and you want to put it in the Vons’s plastic bag. Of course your pillow is larger than your bag. But you can squeeze it in. Right? In my mind this is exactly what the software does. Depending on the resolution (with “Scale image to full panel size” checked) it will either shrink or expend it to the size of the other screen. And my video (taken in XP) proves it.

dsperber said:

I still would sure like you to be using CURRENT DRIVERS and CURRENT CATALYST CONTROL CENTER in Win7, instead of software from 3-4 years ago.

Installed the latest and greatest driver 13-9-legacy_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_whql. The only thing added is a maximum resolution of 1600X900 (maximum was 1440X900). So couple more versions of drivers and they will hopefully add 1600X200 and it’s going to be as good as XP driver in 2009 :). Also in Win7 I have different options on TV: connected to XP-> Zoom-Panoramic-Normal-Wide; connected to 7-> Zoom-Stretch-Wide.
Here are 2 videos with old and new drivers/CCC on Win7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2FUok0U8V4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJi9pHUzzAg