[mythtv-users] Changed monitors (not the TV) and now mythfrontend doesn't display right.

[Peter Bennett]

On 6/7/21 2:38 PM, A. F. Cano wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 09:47:57AM -0400, Peter Bennett wrote:
>> On 6/7/21 9:07 AM, Paul Harrison wrote:
>>> Like John says thing have changed significantly in v31 and even more so
>>> in current master. Not sure about v31 but in master you can select which
>>> monitor you want MythTV to run on in the setup so probably don't need to
>>> use --geometry.
>>>
>>>
>>> Paul H.
>> All versions, including v31, can use mythfrontend settings -> appearance ->
>> theme / screen settings -> Gui dimension to set the size and offset of your
>> picture. I use this all the time, and it works fine.
> On v 30 it's Advanced -> Setup -> Appearance -> Theme/Screen Settings ->
> GUI Dimensions
>
> I set the size to 1920 x 1080 but it wouldn't accept my offset (3840):
> too big.  Still this didn't do it.  The GUI interface was sized
MythTV used to restrict screen setting to sizes up to 1920. V31 
increases this to 3840.
> correctly but displaying any video still had the black bars on left and
> right and it was stretched vertically.
Did you enable "Use GUI size for TV playback" ? This will make the video 
use the same size as your screen setting. Otherwise it tries to make the 
video full screen.
> I could only solve this by setting: Display on Screen: 2.  After that
> the video displays correctly on the tv, but it has an unfortunate side
> effect.  I can no longer start a frontend on screen 1 (mythfrontend
> count starting at 0, my original 2, by my count the tv is on screen 3).
>
> I used to be able to do (on screen 2 - my numbering)
>
> mythfrontend -w -geometry 1280x720

You can use mythfrontend -O GuiHeight=720 -O GuiWidth=1280. This 
overrides the value you specify in setup.

Other fields you can use are GuiOffsetX GuiOffsetY GuiSizeForTV.

> to do all kinds of housekeeping, now (predictably) it goes and opens the
> window on top of the other frontend running on the tv.
>
> This brings up another issue I've had.  Since the frontend settings seem
> to be global (they apply to all frontends running) where to direct the
> sound is also global.  If I start the housekeeping frontend as shown
> above, the sound still goes to the HDMI output of the tv.  It would be
> nice if all these settings could be applicable on a per screen basis,
> not globally.  I know I could probably start the housekeeping frontend
> from a script that sets the sound and now the screen to start on (is this
> possible for the screen number?) before the frontend proper is started,
> but I haven't investigated how to do this yet.  The obvious attempt to
> set -w 1 failed:

Most settings can be overridden with -O options as above. Probably the 
one you need is

-O AudioOutputDevice=ALSA:default or whatever value you need

>
> Boolean type options do not accept values:
>      -w
> Received '1' but unassociated arguments have not been enabled
> mythfrontend version:  [v30.0] www.mythtv.org
>
> This would be an easy way to direct on what screen to open the frontend.
> It would override the global parameter.  Something similar could be done
> to direct the sound output.  In my case: default speakers for the
> frontend on screen 2 (my cound starting at 1) and HDMI for the TV.
>
> I did notice that the above invocation of the frontend also had the
> black sidebars and the vertical stretching even at that windowed lower
> resolution, before I set the "Display on Screen: 2" parameter.  Somehow
> the video display software appears to refer to the maximum height of the
> current window (1200) even if the display area is only 1280x720.
>
> I wonder if this has been fixed in v31 or above, I suppose I'll find out
> when bullseye becomes stable and I upgrade.
>
>> Peter
> In any case, thank you for pointing out a path to a solution.  I now can
> watch properly on the main frontend at least.
>
> Augustine
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
> MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org