Chamsys MagicQ on PC external monitor

[wawawayne]

Okay, I just spent several happy hours trying to set up an external monitor on MQ PC with four additional windows. So I want to share with the community what I learned:

1) The monitor must be to the right of your main monitor, for reasons I'll explain in a sec.

2) Set up the monitor in Windows to "extend desktop". You may not be able to position it vertically so the cursor tracks smoothly across visually because of the offset issue - explained below, but start out that way. You can elevate your laptop a few inches if that's important.

3) In MQ, Setup-View System-View Monitors, make sure 1st External Monitor is enabled. Set the resolution to the best resolution of the monitor. This doesn't seem to be that important, because you can tweak the size of the screen in the width and height boxes.

4) Set up and record a view, either with 1 full window or a combination of windows to fill the external screen. Play with the Width and Height numbers (I sized mine very slightly smaller than the actual monitor resolution, so the windows wouldn't bleed off the edges) and the offsets (Left and Top boxes) until the windows are centered. The reason the monitor has to be on the right is that the offsets don't seem to take negative numbers, so you can't move your windows to the left or down, only right and up.

Chamsys people, if you're reading this, I'd love some real feedback to see if I'm hitting the right notes here... screen real estate is VERY important to functionality of the program. I want to instantly check the status of my show elements, and I hate having to switch views constantly.

 

[ChamSysUSA]

Hi Wayne: I know you have been talking with us on the phone and via email.

Negative numbers should work so you can position your monitor how you want. I'm going to continue with the support offline and then perhaps you could update the results here?

Regards

Phil

Philip Watson
[email protected]
t: +1 (772) 410-5762
t: +1 (866) 261-6955

 

[wawawayne]

Hi Wayne: I know you have been talking with us on the phone and via email.

Negative numbers should work so you can position your monitor how you want. I'm going to continue with the support offline and then perhaps you could update the results here?

Regards

Phil

Philip Watson
[email protected]
t: +1 (772) 410-5762
t: +1 (866) 261-6955

Thanks Phil... I'll keep experimenting. I tried all kinds of numbers... it appears that the monitor offsets defaulted to the width of the main (laotop) monitor, in a positive direction (screen right)... which would make sense... would that be correct? But when I tried negative numbers, both X and Y axes, it seemed I could go about as far as 500 pixels (not sure if that's the right number but close) left but no further... above that and the windows would just vanish somewhere. Any thoughts?

 

[Cryophallion]

You can absolutely do it with negative numbers, I've been doing so for years.

So, first, think of the origin as the bottom left corner of your primary screen (in whatever os you are using). That's where the main interface will live. That's our 0,0. All monitors will have their origin at the bottom left corner.

So, let's say that I like monitor 2 to be to my right, and 3 to be to my left, as I am using a laptop and sometimes use 2, sometimes 3 on my setup, sometimes with an actual monitor, sometimes with 3 being a projector. Shockingly, this is exactly how it is set up at the moment...

So, in this case, knowing that my monitors at this moment are 1920x1080, I will set them up as follows:

Monitor 2: Offset: 1920; Width:1920 (so end of first monitor), Height: 0 (same height as the main monitor, so I'm content with it there).
Monitor 3: Offset: -1920; Width:1920 (so setting the new monitors origin to be a full monitor width away); Height:0

And it works great. Now, just to give a better idea of another setup, lets say that I have a 1024x768 projector, but I like the tops of the screens to match for when I'm moving over there. In that case, my monitor 2 would stay the same, but monitor 3 would be:
Offset: -1024 (the width of the new monitor, basically), Width:1024; Height: 312 (1080-768).

If you wanted monitors above and below, you could do that as well, but I think this should give you an idea about how to work it.

 

[wawawayne]

Attention MQ on PC users: Bug has been fixed in the new beta! Thanks!

Hi, Cryo. Apparently this was a genuine bug in the previous beta version I was using; the programmers at Chamsys fixed it in the new beta and it all works great. I do understand the tree structure of monitor setup in MQ, and I experimented with it enough to figure out that it was probably in the software and not my ignorance, which is more normal. Thanks for your reply, though. A little tutorial on monitor positioning is never a bad thing.

BTW, I have been setting the size of my external monitors (in the MQ monitor settings) to a few pixels less than their actual resolution, both h & v, so that I don't lose any window data at the edges. It helps grab things quickly, too.

 

[Cryophallion]

Heh, I just noticed your location. I lived just up 495 from you until early this year. Too bad, it may have been fun to play with things...

Excellent that they fixed your bug. And yes, a few lower pixels are nice. I had an issue yesterday where I went from home with my 3 monitors to a school, and the sound program I was using was on the left screen, only 3 pixels showing on my main screen, and for the life of me it wouldn't move, I had to just maximize it. At least with magicq I was able to just click internal and my windows popped back to my interface.

 

[wawawayne]

Hey, yeah, there aren't many MQ users around New England that I know of... I'm sure there are some hiding out in the woodwork though.

 

[jamesh]

Hi All,
Just to update you, there was a little bug where the negative monitor offsets where not working correctly in recent MagicQ versions.
This is now fixed in the beta release v1.7.2.7.