Hoster Show Nightmare - A 3rd video card was used and dialogs moved to it

[Joe Nieves]

I had a terrible experience with Hoster on Thursday night Karaoke show, the singer and database search menu screens where not visible on my laptop or extended monitor screens and couldn't do any finds of singers or song search all night, I had to totally rely on my books even the regulars had to get the numbers in order to call up their songs it was a nightmare.

Earlier that day I had the singers and search screen opened up on a third monitor that I use coming from a USB Video card (Star TechU SB2VGAE2) there was no issues other than in some songs the lyrics rendered properly, but the previous screen didn't clear, so you had a scrambled lyrics screen, only on some songs (Not All), but I've already experience this issue before posting a request for a fix to this problem.

I then shut down after I finished then went to do my gig later that night, I completely shut down and disabled the drivers for that USB video card and other devices which are not needed from the device manager like I normally due and started my show.

When I clicked on the search button I can see the icon at the taskbar but the search screen menu did not appear I tried everything I could think of and nothing worked.

I finally figured out after much frustration all while doing the show, that the Hoster program was sending the singers and search menu to the Third monitor that I had used earlier that day, but the problem is that the third monitor wasn't connected and the drivers had been disabled, Why would Hoster try to render a menu to a screen monitor that doesn't exist?

The next day I enabled the USB video drivers, hooked up the video card and monitor, started Hoster program and clicked for a search and the menu rendered at the third monitor, I then dragged the menu back to the laptop screen, closed Hoster and reopened and all was well after that.

But this shouldn't have happened, Hoster Menu should have rendered back to the laptop screen not to a non existing monitor and disabled drivers...

Thanks
Joe…

[ddouglass]

Hoster saves the screen position in the registry for each window when you close it down. This is so they will open in exactly the same position as you had them the last time you used that window in Hoster before shutting down.
Using the Reset Displays in Options doesn't change those from what I can see. May need to add those to that function though not sure how many people use a thrid monitor, but others have lost these too in other ways. In the mean time don't forget to move them back before removing that monitor.

[Joe Nieves]

Well thanks ddouglass for confirming the problem that I experienced, the suggestion I made in my other post for adding an option to chose a Default "Video Card", much the same way we have now for the "Audio Card" output would have solved that problem quickly.

Other Post: http://forum.mtu.com/showthread.php?t=12174

A laptop screen does get crowded very easily Thus the benefit of additional screen work space will make your setup more professionally organized and easier to manage especially at busy venues.

Hoping they conceder implementing this idea, it would be a Big Plus..

Thank You
Joe....

[admin]

Originally Posted by Joe Nieves

Earlier that day I had the singers and search screen opened up on a third monitor that I use coming from a USB Video card (Star TechU SB2VGAE2) there was no issues other than in some songs the lyrics rendered properly, but the previous screen didn't clear, so you had a scrambled lyrics screen, only on some songs (Not All), but I've already experience this issue before posting a request for a fix to this problem.

Clearly Hoster can handle multiple display cards as you used three. Thanks for letting us know that.

Originally Posted by Joe Nieves

But this shouldn't have happened, Hoster Menu should have rendered back to the laptop screen not to a non existing monitor and disabled drivers...

I see this as your desire... not Hoster's deficit. We have never addressed this, not is it mentioned in the manual, nor has it ever been asked for before. Well... read on.

Originally Posted by Joe Nieves

...the suggestion I made in my other post for adding an option to chose a Default "Video Card", much the same way we have now for the "Audio Card" output would have solved that problem quickly.
Other Post: http://forum.mtu.com/showthread.php?t=12174

Hoping they conceder implementing this idea, it would be a Big Plus...

OK, we added a task to our Hoster spec document to add code that automatically forces the Singers display, Search & Singer dialogs to the computer display when the code finds them "defaulted outside" any available display limits (i.e. if they were on display #3 that is now disconnected, it will reset them to display #1). This would have automatically made your dialogs visible to you. We see this as a small task.

We believe that to add full support to show multiple display cards and allow you to select one or more is a large task. Given that we have only had one Forum discussion (6+ years ago) about a multi-head video card, to add this complex code will not be added to our spec document.

[Joe Nieves]

Ok I will have to accept that, but is there anything that can be done with the issue of some files not rendering properly when my USB video card and third monitor is active?

Any help with this is appreciated..

Thank You
Joe...

[Joe Nieves]

I've just notice that you think I have three video cards and I Don't.

I am working with only two Video cards; my laptop card is an nVidia 8600 GT with 512 vid ram which handles the laptop screen and extended monitor.

The third monitor is being driven by a USB Video card (Star TechU SB2VGAE2) that is connected to a powered USB hub on the laptop.

So in affect there are only two video cards operating off my laptop.

The only problem I am having is that in some files the lyric screen renders scrambled, but I've also noticed that the problem files are consistently the same ones that are having this problem, all others play correctly.

The Preview display on the laptop always renders correctly with no problems even though the singers screen lyrics is scrambled.

This only happens when I use the USB video card, I also notice that in the Display Properties Settings the USB video card defaults to monitor 2 and the extended monitor defaults to 3, when I disconnect the USB video card it doesn't change the numerical sequence of the video cards, but if I disconnect the USB card I don't get the random lyric screen problem.

Is there anything else I can Try to fix this…?

Attachments:
1. Image of the Display Properties
2. Images of the Lyric Screens, small preview laptop screen to the left, and large singers display to the right of each image.

Thanks
Joe...