Hardware – Adding an extra video display

You can use the Image & Video Block to trigger and control images on your PC monitor. The block also allows you to send the same images to a second screen, if there is one connected. On a laptop this is straightforward as they generally have a video output for a second monitor as standard. On a desktop PC this is more problematic as most machines only have a single VGA port. To add a second output for another monitor or video projector would need a dual-head graphics card.

For those who don’t want to fiddle with the insides of a PC, there are a couple of options for adding additional displays that are a lot more plug-and-play:

1) Matrox dualhead2go – powered from the USB. Plug the output from your graphics card in one side and get two monitor outputs on the other. Works with most PC’s but make sure you get the right version – either the analog or digital version, but not the DP version.

2) USB-to-VGA  – Turns a USB port into a second monitor. This one from Canford Audio is typical, but there are lots of others available.

Remember, if you want to have one monitor showing the images and another showing the Designer/Player software, set the display mode to ‘Extended’ rather than ‘Clone’.