KVR Audio

Kalamata Kid · Post by **Kalamata Kid** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 1:56 am

Hello,

I now have a 28" monitor 1920x 1200. I want to have more real-estate so looking at a single 38" or 40" monitor. 38" Monitors are expensive so I am thinking of getting a low priced 38" to 40" TV and use it as my computer monitor. They are 1920 x 1080 pixels. I want to avoid a two monitor setup

I now display native resolution but need to reduce an application window and its contents at will to take advantage of the large monitor real estate. Each application window to have different "resolution".

How about a way to fool the screen to think it has multiple screens. Each virtual screen must be able to have a simulated adjustable resolution.
http://www.splitview.com/SplitView-Personal-Edition shows what I need but I also need control the resolution of each "screen". I would run Cubase on the bottom full "screen" and the VST on each of the top.

Please help.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 2:35 am

Virtual screens sounds like a pretty cool idea, but I don't have any experience with that. I will say that I don't understand why you would want to move from a 28" 1920x1200 to a 40" 1920x1080. That's actually less resolution! You'd only end up with larger pixels.

Kalamata Kid · Post by **Kalamata Kid** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 5:32 am

That the pixels are roughly the same in number but will be larger in the larger monitor is correct.

If you reduce some text in WORD to 70% it is still crisp. What I want to do is not only reduce the text but the whole window. At 70% I can double the programs that are visible on the big monitor

The 70% is roughly equivalent of what I want to do so the quality suffers but it is in the range of being usable. If I find that is pushing things I may reduce the size by only 80%. At 100% it is the native resolution and just as well keep my 28" monitor.

So what I need is program that can reduce any GUI in zoom out fashion.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 9:46 am

Kalamata Kid wrote:If you reduce some text in WORD to 70% it is still crisp.

That's because Word still uses one pixel for one pixel, and re-renders everything again. If you reduce any desktop image to 70%, it looks like poo. If you set your display resolution to 1440x900, it also looks like poo because each virtual pixel is smeared across 4 adjacent physical pixels.

If I were you. I'd look into a couple of possible solutions:

1) buy two 19" 1900x1200 monitors (these are rather cheap)

2) use regular virtual desktop software, eg http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 17881.aspx and get used to switching desktops. There's only one thing you look at at any given time.

3) advanced properties of the monitor settings allows changing to a different DPI. Set that smaller, and you'll fit more on one screen. Be prepared that a lot of software doesn't handle customised dpi settings gracefully. I had set it to larger for some time (switched to a monitor with smaller pixels and could not get used), and sometimes I could not access buttons which fell outside of the screen (even happened on regular dialogs of WinXP itself)

Kaine · Post by **Kaine** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 11:41 am

BertKoor wrote:
Kalamata Kid wrote:If you reduce some text in WORD to 70% it is still crisp.
That's because Word still uses one pixel for one pixel, and re-renders everything again. If you reduce any desktop image to 70%, it looks like poo. If you set your display resolution to 1440x900, it also looks like poo because each virtual pixel is smeared across 4 adjacent physical pixels.

If I were you. I'd look into a couple of possible solutions:

1) buy two monitors

This.

Failing that if you really must keep just one monitor invest in a decent 28" - 30" monitor with a 2560x1600 resolution.

Personally I went with 2 X 27" for the most screen estate I could get on the budget.

Kalamata Kid · Post by **Kalamata Kid** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 6:58 pm

I went to several webpages and zoomed out to 80% and 70%. The image did degrade and text was still fairly sharp but it was still very usable. Are you saying that I should get glasses to see the poo?

If your monitor is set to native resolution zoom out on this KVR page to 70%. I did not see any poo. Get glasses?

What I need is a program that will allow one to use the mouse wheel and a hot key to zoom out the whole application or GUI to at least 70%. This I feel is a better solution then splitting up the desktop.

forkol · Post by **forkol** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 12:33 am

Kalamata Kid wrote: ....
What I need is a program that will allow one to use the mouse wheel and a hot key to zoom out the whole application or GUI to at least 70%. This I feel is a better solution then splitting up the desktop.

This will make the DAW/VST un-useable. Ever notice that most VST's you can't resize them? That's because the graphics are bitmaps, and when you change the resolution, you would also have to re-size the bitmap. To do this you need to either add or subtract info. That's fine for an image -- humans can adapt well to missing/added info, but a DAW can't. As mentioned before, buttons and other graphic elements will now be out of place or un-selectable.

So, how do Web pages and Word-processing programs do this? They are actually drawing programs at heart. Fonts usually use vectors, and not bitmaps, and Web pages use layout language to lay out windows and graphics widgets. And most of your interaction with Web pages and Word programs are simple, such as clicking buttons or typing text. VST's and DAWs would be much more complex, with many more moving, graphic buttons and moving graphic items.

Your only solution to this is multiple desktops, or multiple screens, it looks like.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:29 am

If you zoom out, the web browser still re-renders everything, where 1px == 1px. That's why you don't see any poo. Same as setting Word or PdfViewer zoomed.

This won't happen if you shrink the whole desktop (except if you mess with the DPI settings of your monitor) Then you'll definitely get poo, it's interpreted as an image and NOT re-rendered.

Kalamata Kid · Post by **Kalamata Kid** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 4:00 am

I set the native 1920 x 1200 screen at 2560 x 1600 and yes the sight was not pretty and maybe poo is appropriate. It is usable but will tire of the softness of text and graphics in no time at all. I suspect there are ways around this but who will do it for the one person requesting this.

Thanks to All for your prompt and accurate advice.

Simulated screens on a single monitor