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How do I split audio between my pc and monitor?

Help me give my monitor a split personality

  • I have a PC running Windows XP. For 2 different reasons I want to split my monitor into two independent screens which Windows would then see as completely independent i.e. in Control Panel display there are two separate monitors etc. There are two reasons why I want to do this. The first is that I am using something called the Psychophysics Toolbox for Matlab which takes over the entire screen. Unfortunately when its running on a single screen it makes it impossible to debug the Matlab code. It works really well in dual screen mode with one screen displaying the output whilst the other screen displays Matlab. Unfortunately I don't have the physical space to put another screen on my desk so I'm trying to find some software which will split my current monitor in half instead. The other slightly more trivial is that I have a very large widescreen display 1900x1200. This is too wide to be useful for some apps - e.g. web browser's, Acrobat etc. If I could split the screen somehow so I could maximize apps in each half then it would be a lot more useful. I realise I could do this by just carefully resizing each window but some kind of virtual display driver would just make it more convenient. So anyone know of any software which might make this work? Thanks a lot in advance.

  • Answer:

    I can't help you with the Matlap portion of your question. For your other question though, you can do the following:Minimize all the windows you have open except for the two you want displayed split-screen.Click on a blank portion of the taskbar and select "Tile Windows Vertically"Windows will automatically size each of the windows to take up half the screen vertically. If you minimize all but three windows, it will size each window to take up a third of the screen, and so on.

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chrisamiller

Thanks, but I think what I am looking for is something at a much lower level that actually implements virtual screens at the driver level especially for the Matlab requirement. Gridmove only works by sending WM_RESIZE messages to a specific window. What I'm looking for is for Windows to actually assume it has multiple physical monitors even when it doesn't. Thanks anyway

empedia

this is an extremely weird solution and probably a bit of overkill, but could you run Matlab within a Virtual PC instance, so it would only take over the "virtual" desktop?

drjimmy11

Could you save on desk space by running a dual desktop setup on a monitor and a cheap LCD projector. Of course, this transfers your space problem from your desk to your wall...

grateful

http://www.splitview.com/index.htm describes something which seems to meet your needs. You should download it and give it a try. However, before posting, I downloaded the software and it doesn't create something that Windows thinks is two separate displays. It does alter how "maximize" works and probably some of the API calls that an app makes regarding display are altered. Therefore, it might work for you. It might not. What you really want would need to be either a modified display driver specific to your video card, or a generic video driver (not accelerated) that has the capability you're looking for. I tried a number of Google searches and couldn't find anything that does this. Unfortunately, if you were on another platform, specifically a UNIX-flavored platform, X-Windows could do this trivially.

Ethereal Bligh

I sometimes run a second monitor output through my TV tuner card. The image quality is degraded somewhat. You could use a second PC, and use remote control software on the main PC - basically the same as Virtual PC, but with real hardware.

Chuckles

Try http://www.maxivista.com/. It installs itself as a driver for a second "video card", then pipes the data over the network. The viewer program is meant to be run on a spare machine, thus turning that old laptop into a second display. By running the viewer program in a virtual machine which lives on part of your primary display, you should be able to accomplish the goal. You can even emulate a third and fourth display with MaxiVista, for really absurd tricks. (I've done this with 3 machines and 4 total displays. Setting it up took hours but it was awesome.) Plan B involves holding the programmer of Psychophysics Toolbox at knifepoint... ;) Seriously though, I hope that crapware was free, because otherwise "the customer is always right" trumps any assumptions they make about your hardware!

Myself

Thanks for all the suggestions. Unfortunately Psychophysics Toolbox takes over the whole screen by design and necessity so rewriting it won't help. I know about MaxiVista and I thought that might work if you could run the client and server on the same PC (i.e. not in a VM) but alas you can't. I think for now I'm going to have to get a second monitor but thanks for all the help anyway.

empedia

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