Force video to fullscreen on extended desktop display??

[peanutismint]

We sometimes show DVDs in the venue where I work, and for a more 'professional' appearance we'd like to be able to control the videos/playlist etc from the primary display and have the actual video display fullscreen on the secondary display (which also gets sent out to a projector).

Basically the problem we're facing is that, while we can easily drag the video window over to the second display ('extended desktop') and then double-click to fullscreen, the video output window will jump back to the primary display on skipping to the next media file in the playlist. I've experimented with several different menu options for video output, including the DirectX 'wallpaper mode' set to the secondary display, but nothing seems to work perfectly, it keeps jumping back to the main display every time the clip finishes....

Is there something I'm missing? I have searched the forums about this matter but all the posts seem to be addressing slightly different problems....

[HalifaxSamuels]

Fullscreen on extended displays works fine for me, but only if I'm using the default skin. Once I change to any custom skin at all it will only fullscreen on the primary display. A workaround would be to change the extended display to the primary display, unlock the taskbar, drag it over to what is now the secondary screen, then re-lock it. That way you've effectively got it fullscreened on the "extended" display and you still have your taskbar and whatnot. The only thing that would disrupt the video would be if you have popup notifications - I've got Avira Antivir and Thunderbird that pop up notifications on the primary display, so that wouldn't be very good in the middle of a video.

This has to be a setting somewhere that I'm missing given that it works for me on the default skin but no custom skins. I'd really like to find out what the problem really is, though, because I'd like to use a custom skin and still fullscreen on my TV instead of my laptop.

[peanutismint]

Good idea re. the taskbar dragging; will give it a go as a temp fix - I'd be really surprised if there wasn't a 'proper' fix as well - anybody??

[HalifaxSamuels]

I played around with it all yesterday and while I didn't find a fix, the issue did seem to be consistent with it working when it was set to the default theme, but when I set it to use a custom theme the problem came up. I'm having other issues as well but they don't seem to be related. So far for me streaming is not working at all (happens on two computers) and certain skins from the official pack not working, as well as all WinAmp skins not working (not tested on my other computer yet).

Of course, I'm no expert or anything so it could easily be a "don't be broken" checkbox I missed...

[beatpower]

Hi, I tried to find out a suitable answer to the same issue but I din't find one by now.
I started a topic a few days ago: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=89861
Hopefully an answer will be proposed here.

[peanutismint]

just by means of an update - I tried the 'taskbar' idea - it kinda worked.... what I ended up doing was....

1. Make my external display the 'primary' display.
2. Moving all of the desktop icons to the internal ('secondary') display and selecting 'auto-hide taskbar' so the external display showed nothing but the faintest thin line of the taskbar/start menu
3. Run VLC from an explorer window on the primary display (it seems this is an integral part of getting this to work - when I launched VLC from the secondary display, even when I fullscreened video on the primary display it would always shoot back over to the secondary when the next media item began...)
4. drag the VLC playlist window/controls etc to the secondary display and fullscreen the video window on the primary.

This way, when the media changed to the next clip in the playlist, the only thing that would be noticeable was a split-second view of the desktop behind the video (which was emptied of icons/taskbar/start menu and had had its background set to 'black').

Still not the most user-friendly way to work but hopefully this will be fixed with a dedicated multi-display mode in a later version......??

[beatpower]

just by means of an update - I tried the 'taskbar' idea - it kinda worked.... what I ended up doing was....

Still not the most user-friendly way to work but hopefully this will be fixed with a dedicated multi-display mode in a later version......??

Thnx, that's exacly what I did the last time I used an external monitor, unfortunately it didn't work out the way I hoped it would. It's a compromis, and a bad one to
Looking forward to a more satisfying solution.