Matrox only sending out to one projector, not all three

kazps

hi,

so i'm going out via Matrox TH2Go to three projectors. My isadora file has three stages. When I connect everything, Stage 1 disappears from my computer's desktop and shows up thru the projector. But 2 and 3 still show as Stage windows on my desktop, and don't come through the projector. when i go into my computer's preferences and look at the displays section, it doesn't show the 3072x768 option that i believe is supposed to be there/ is indicative of the matrox communicating with the computer. ANY HELP GREATLY APPRECIATED!! Thanks.

vanakaru

Matrox 2Go will take one output from your computer and split this into 2 or 3. So you need to have one video 2 or 3 times wide to sent to Matrox. If you need to put different eĺements on the divided video you need to do this before you send out one final output. What you see is correct - one output goes to Matrox.

So instead of 2/3 stages you need one that has 2/3 projector actors placed on the segments accordingly.

But not seeing the right resolution may indicate some other problem.

CraigAlfredson

The Matrox TripleHead is a finicky beast. When it doesn't see a resolution that it likes (like 3072x768) coming out of the computer, it simply throughputs the video out of output 1. You need to force the computer to the correct resolution and then the TripleHead should work. Here are a few ways to force the resolution (assuming you are on an Apple with a recent version of OSX):

1) Option-click into the "scaled" resolution list in System Preferences/Display and see if the correct resolution shows up.

2) Load the Matrox Powerdesk software (if you haven't already) and see if you can get the correct resolution that way.

3) Load a third party app such as Switch ResX to force the resolution.

If none of those options work, then your computer may not be able to handle the resolution. Try a lower resolution like 2400x600 or 2048x768 to see if that works.

Craig

Skulpture

@vanakaru is right. Matrox does not give you three independent outputs. It upscales video to give you a superwide screen. What you can do then is basically chop the video into thirds so it looks like three outputs.

gapworks

@kazps as vanakaru already mentioned. to think that 2go gives you 3 outputs is a total misunderstanding. its simply a ultra wide image, but only one.

i normally set my stage to double or tripple width (depending on the amount of displays / projectors i use) and have 2/3 projectors in my patch which i scale and position 2 my needs. I is quite handy to have a

stage preview window in the control panel to see where your projectors are at.

and for the basic setup of the 2go you can try to option click on the "scale" option in your monitor setup (i´m on mac! don´t know about windows!) which gives you more options to choose from.

hope this helps

CraigAlfredson

It's also worth mentioning that you can, in fact, use a triplehead with three separate stages, by using a handy feature in the Isadora preferences 'Stage' tab. You can set a stage to be 'left third' 'middle' or 'right third' instead of 'full'. This essentially takes the large triple-wide output and splits it to match the three outputs of the triplehead, saving a lot of programming work.