Mailing List Archive

dual head setup getting screen size from first screen
Hi All,

I have Myth set up in the bedroom now. Just hung it off of the PC in
there already.

I bought an NVidia 5200 and put it in the box alongside the existing
"desktop monitor" adapter. I configured X to be dual-head with the
desktop head at 1600x1200 and the TV-Out/5200 head at 640x480.

Everything except one thing is working. It seems that Myth is trying to
figure out the size of the screen and it picks up the size of the
desktop screen (:0.0) rather than the TV-Out one (:0.1), so I had to
override the GUI size on the command line.

That's a less than stellar workaround though because now the gui sizing
(width, height, x and y offset) I configured to compensate for overscan
is not working. Using my overscan compensating width, height, x and y
offset as the gui override sets the video player size to that size,
effectively defeating the overscan.

I think if myth would just read the screen size from the correct (:0.1)
screen and not :0.0 all would work well.

Ideas?

b.

--
My other computer is your Microsoft Windows server.

Brian J. Murrell
Re: dual head setup getting screen size from first screen [ In reply to ]
Perhaps the start of the output from myth starting up (without gui
override option) would be helpful too:

2005-09-11 09:17:44.294 New DB connection, total: 1
Total desktop width=640, height=480, numscreens=2
2005-09-11 09:17:44.482 Using screen 0, 1152x768 at 0,0

It's 1152x768 now (not the 1600x1200 I mentioned before) as I have been
swapping video cards around.

It's also worth mentioning that when a recording starts playing, it
looks like it's being scaled to the size of the main desktop (1152x768)
so I only about the top left 1/4 of the picture.

Definitely seems like Myth is confused about where to get it's screen
geometry from.

b.

--
My other computer is your Microsoft Windows server.

Brian J. Murrell
Re: dual head setup getting screen size from first screen [ In reply to ]
Hey man I jsut got done futzing with this about 2 days ago. Here is
what is happening. You are either using the twinview that nvida
supplies with it's driver like I am or you are using the standard X
stuff to get 2 screens. Anyway, I tried the same thing with my
mythtv and X is either told or figures out that the desktop is an
average of the 2 display sizes. Right now I am running in clone mode,
with my desktop only 800x600. My complaint is that when I was using
different sizes for the tv and monitor, even if you tell mythfrontend
to start in a certain size and location it still renders the fonts for
the average desktop size. Kinda looks like crap. I would ultimately
like to have the tv above and the monitor below, but until I can get
mythfrontend
to behave like I expect it to, I am stuck with 800x600 clone on my monitor.

I haven't gotten to trying any of the overscaning stuff yet, but my
understanding from reading the nvida driver notes is that you cannot
do this unless you have a card with a tuner on it.. not sure why...
but that's what it says.

On 9/11/05, Brian J. Murrell <brian@interlinx.bc.ca> wrote:
> Perhaps the start of the output from myth starting up (without gui
> override option) would be helpful too:
>
> 2005-09-11 09:17:44.294 New DB connection, total: 1
> Total desktop width=640, height=480, numscreens=2
> 2005-09-11 09:17:44.482 Using screen 0, 1152x768 at 0,0
>
> It's 1152x768 now (not the 1600x1200 I mentioned before) as I have been
> swapping video cards around.
>
> It's also worth mentioning that when a recording starts playing, it
> looks like it's being scaled to the size of the main desktop (1152x768)
> so I only about the top left 1/4 of the picture.
>
> Definitely seems like Myth is confused about where to get it's screen
> geometry from.
>
> b.
>
> --
> My other computer is your Microsoft Windows server.
>
> Brian J. Murrell
>
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iD8DBQBDJC/Ml3EQlGLyuXARAvROAKCSrK0t5SXPZvnU05pAU2kyLStSfgCgxcru
> Il995RO7rO3m+xlus3I4aIE=
> =BufJ
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>
>
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: dual head setup getting screen size from first screen [ In reply to ]
On 11/09/05, Brian J. Murrell <brian@interlinx.bc.ca> wrote:
> Perhaps the start of the output from myth starting up (without gui
> override option) would be helpful too:
>
> 2005-09-11 09:17:44.294 New DB connection, total: 1
> Total desktop width=640, height=480, numscreens=2
> 2005-09-11 09:17:44.482 Using screen 0, 1152x768 at 0,0
>
> It's 1152x768 now (not the 1600x1200 I mentioned before) as I have been
> swapping video cards around.
>
> It's also worth mentioning that when a recording starts playing, it
> looks like it's being scaled to the size of the main desktop (1152x768)
> so I only about the top left 1/4 of the picture.
>
> Definitely seems like Myth is confused about where to get it's screen
> geometry from.

If you have 2 separate X servers running (1 for each screen), can you
use $DISPLAY to make mythfrontend run on the desired screen instead of
having it try and guess?

Nick
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: dual head setup getting screen size from first screen [ In reply to ]
On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 01:25 +0100, Nick wrote:
>
> If you have 2 separate X servers running (1 for each screen),

Nope. That seems a waste. Why the overhead of two X servers when one
with two screens is sufficient?

> can you
> use $DISPLAY to make mythfrontend run on the desired screen instead of
> having it try and guess?

It's not trying to guess. I am setting DISPLAY=:0.1 before running
mythfrontend. It displaying on the right screen, just not getting it's
screen geometry from the X server for the right screen. It runs on :0.1
but thinks it's geometry is that of :0.0.

b.

--
My other computer is your Microsoft Windows server.

Brian J. Murrell
Re: dual head setup getting screen size from first screen [ In reply to ]
On Sun, 2005-09-11 at 19:58 -0400, Joe Garcia wrote:
> You are either using the twinview that nvida
> supplies with it's driver

Not that I know of. This sounds like some kind of monitor/tvout cloning
option. I have two completely different outputs. Regular Linux desktop
to a monitor on :0.0 and mythfrontend to the TV via the 5200 on a TV.

> like I am or you are using the standard X
> stuff to get 2 screens.
Yeah, the latter.

> Anyway, I tried the same thing with my
> mythtv and X is either told or figures out that the desktop is an
> average of the 2 display sizes.

Seems silly.

> Right now I am running in clone mode,
> with my desktop only 800x600.

Yeah, I don't want this. I want the mythfrontend screen and the deskotp
screen to remain separate.

b.

--
My other computer is your Microsoft Windows server.

Brian J. Murrell
Re: dual head setup getting screen size from first screen [ In reply to ]
I asked on this list a while ago (archive doesn't seem to be searchable
and google isn't finding it) with this same problem. If I remember correctly
it worked properly until .17. If I manually specify -geometry 640x480 when
starting mythfrontend it works ok for me so haven't looked into it further.
See if -geometry works better than specifying size and position.
Re: dual head setup getting screen size from first screen [ In reply to ]
On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 02:18 pm, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> It's not trying to guess. I am setting DISPLAY=:0.1 before running
> mythfrontend. It displaying on the right screen, just not getting it's
> screen geometry from the X server for the right screen. It runs on :0.1
> but thinks it's geometry is that of :0.0.

WARNING: this is a guess

Do you have a window manager on the mythtv screen?

Paul
--
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: dual head setup getting screen size from first screen [ In reply to ]
On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 02:18 pm, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> It's not trying to guess. I am setting DISPLAY=:0.1 before running
> mythfrontend. It displaying on the right screen, just not getting it's
> screen geometry from the X server for the right screen. It runs on :0.1
> but thinks it's geometry is that of :0.0.

I did some more research on possible causes.

If you look in libs/libmyth/mythcontext.cpp at function void
MythContextPrivate::GetScreenBounds() you can see the logic.

Its also important to understand the desktop functions found in
file:/usr/share/qt3/doc/html/qdesktopwidget.html#details (this is on my system
by installed the qt3 docs)

Attached is a quick hack to fix the problem for the svn tree. I didn't even
compile it, so best of luck.

Paul
--
Re: Re: dual head setup getting screen size from first screen [ In reply to ]
On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 07:37 -0400, djg@pdp8.net wrote:
> I asked on this list a while ago (archive doesn't seem to be searchable
> and google isn't finding it) with this same problem. If I remember correctly
> it worked properly until .17. If I manually specify -geometry 640x480 when
> starting mythfrontend it works ok for me so haven't looked into it further.
> See if -geometry works better than specifying size and position.

That is what I am using but it seems that sets the size of the GUI
(which i have configured to a slightly smaller than desktop size size in
Setup), not so much the size of the screen. So my GUI winds up being
640x480 rather than the 570x430 or so that I have configured in Setup.
I make the GUI smaller than the screen so it fits inside the area of the
640x480 left after overscan.

b.

--
My other computer is your Microsoft Windows server.

Brian J. Murrell
Re: Re: dual head setup getting screen size from first screen [ In reply to ]
I've put a patch in the Mythtv trac system for this problem. If it goes in,
it should show up in 0.18.2 or 0.19.

http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/347

Paul
--
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users