Not able to use second screen for project

[Barrillio]

Hi there,

In the past I have used VLC Media player as to have my laptop and use it to project on a second screen. Mainly for VJ project on shows. beamer or second big screen.
Now i am setting up a new project and have a brand new lapotop. Everything works fine exept for playing the project on the second screen. Meanwhile i've read a lot of topics & video's , but nothing works. The project keeps starting on screen one (1), on the left top corner. I can put it on full screen on screen 1. Controller is playable on screen 1 and 2.

Do you know how I can get my project on the second screen?

Windows 11
VLC Media Player: 3.0.20

Thanx in advance.

[Barrillio]

I checked :

It works for me. Big thing is to change in windows settings you primary settings as well. It worked for me.

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 48#p508677

I do have a solution to display the full video on the second display while keeping the VLC controls on the Primary Display.
It always works... but I had a comment about why the other solutions do not work well.

VLC engine is directing its rendered stream to the Video Output modules and it is these modules that need to have the ability to control which display is used.
Yes VLC is the umbrella application but the author of those particular modules need to write this functionality.
If you use the Preferences:ALL view, you will notice that only DirectDraw has a facility to select the display, none of the others have this which is why only DirectDraw is actually working. I am speculating but I do not think those other modules even read in that setting.

Just to be clear on terms;
"Primary Display" a physical device, such as your first monitor or your laptop's screen.
"Secondary Display" a physical device such as the TV/monitor/projector connected to your computer or laptop via a HDMI/DP/VGA/DVI cable.
"Main Display" a windows term indicating the default display device to use when the application does not override it.


Regardless of all that, the solution that does work (in Windows) is to make the following settings adjustments as a prerequisite:
Tools\Preferences\Interface:
--"Integrate video in interface" UNchecked
Tools\Preferences\Video:
--"Enable video" checked
--"Fullscreen" checked
--"Windows decorations" UNchecked
--"Show media title on Video" UNchecked

To control which display shows the video set the Secondary Display to be the Main (Default) Display.
To do this in Windows right click on the desktop and choose "Display Properties"
Select the second monitor and check the box "Make this my main display"

In addition, remove the taskbar from the main display and only show it on the secondary
Also move all desktop icons to the Primary Display.

Open VLC and drag it to your Primary Display.
The controls will now be on the Primary Display,
Play the video and it will now appear on your Second display.
This is what we were trying to achieve.

Some caveats are that if you try to change preferences, it will pop up on the main display so you cannot do this or make changes to windows while the audience is watching your secondary display.

In my situations I am either running the AV board at church (use case #1) or I am broadcasting a presentation (Use case #2)
In both situations I want a play list on my main display so that I can select what to play.

There are some additional settings to make this more functional.
Settings:All :Playlist
"Display Playlist Tree" checked
"Repeat All" checked (This is only if you want it to loop the video which is useful when using the image on a green screen)
"Play and Pause" checked (This is very useful. After the video plays it will pause at the last frame and just stay there
rather than exiting the video and then displaying the desktop)

"Start paused" checked
"Auto Start" UNchecked (This way you can have everything ready and it only plays when you hit play.

My use cases is live stream broadcasting/presentations.
I use a BlackMagic ATEM Pro as my video switcher.
The laptop running VLC feeds into one of the channels and provides a nice moving background image overlaid onto what I green screened.
Also I set this up at my church to allow for easy playback of content.
The video editing team uploads the video into a shared directory and names it with a sequence.
Then it is automatically available in the playlist.
The laptop secondary display feeds into a switcher.
The person running it previews the video / audio first and then queues it up and cuts over to it.


I have done something else in the past which was that I directed VLC to just be a video stream that I fed into Virtual DJ running on the same PC and then I let VDJ control where the video was directed. This worked well and VDJ allows you to use a control surface ($10-$10,000) rather than a keyboard and you can fade between multiple video inputs. It is a very useful software tool.
My Best to you all.