[vox] Comments: DualHead/Twinview in X, Nvidia, Mirroring

[ME]

Keywords: video mirror, XFree86, X, twinview, GeForce 4, TV, video out

Hello,

I have been trying to make all of the hardware from my Dell Laptop work in
Linux. It is one of those things where I look to add new features as I
wonder about them, or have a need.

Recently, I have taken to playing some video files, and came across one
with a subtitles files playable with mplayer, that I wanted to record to
VHS. I knew my Dell laptop came with a video dongle that had 3 video
outputs (composite, RCA-style video out, S-Video) and then there was an
SVGA connector on the back of the laptop. Of course, I know many of these
extra "bonous" features (especially in laptops) dont always work in Linux
due to closed, proprietary docs on the hardware, and the resulting lack of
drivers.

OK, so a long time ago (6 months?) I decided to get RtCW to work well in X
on my laptop (like I did on a desktop many months prior.) I went ahead and
got those Nvidia kernel mods, and GLX support add-on and installed them.

Anyway, they worked just fine and RtCW in Linux worked too. (Well enough
for me to buy a copy of the full version to play in Linux.)

So the other day, I decided I wanted to see if I could get the Video-out
to work so I could record to VHS. After doing some googling, and being
unsuccessful, I started poking around the source trees, but found nothing
good int he way of docs. Then I went to Nvidia's site to download the
latest version for both, and found a readme for them. Oooo! A readme!

After RTFM (for a readme that I could have used long before) I found out
some very nice things.
1) It was possible to use the Video out on the little dongle
2) Mirroring to both the LCD and the video out was possible
3) Options could be added to XF86Config-4 to choose from compositie, RCA,
or S-VIDEO.
4) Another feature called "TwinView" was also possible to permit a second
monitor to be connect to the left, right, up or down so scrolling out of
one monitor in the direction of the other permitted use of monitor +
monitor (TV) as my desktop size. (Something you could do with Macs 10
years ago+)
5) This feature could be used to auto-detect by restarting X would to
allow a connected video to be used as a second monitor.
6) I could use mplayer (or xine) to play a video through to the TV on the
RCA-video out "monitor" while my LCD was free to run other applications
and do other stuff like browse the Internet.

This is so cool! Palette is shared with both and video memory is used for
both. Performance is zippy and lively. Perhaps playing wolf while playing
a video (different monitors) may work. (Sure, there will probably be
performance issues, but...) :-D

If you have a laptop and the GeForce 4 series video chips, I suggest you
check this out. It is very cool. All of the docs are available in their
nvidia readme for these drivers on their web site. It is easiest if you
build your own kernel, but they also have RPM for different kernels
provided by RH, and possibly SuSE.

Of course mplayer is very nice too. I could toss it a subtitles file with
mods and have it display my subtitles whereever I wanted! Smooth playing
and nice quality to video out.

-ME

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