Multiple Churches, Multiple Display problems

cameronag

How can I get OpenLP to place and size text correctly on different displays in different churches?

I prepare OpenLP services on my laptop (sometimes desktop) which are used in 3 different churches with 3 different display resolutions. When I've got slides set up for one display, say 800x600 (old projector!), the text is too small and usually in the wrong place on the background when shown on the next display, 1920x1200 (new UHD screens!)

I've been struggling with this for a long time! So far the only partial solution I've found is to use three different portable instances of OpenLP, each with their own set of customised background themes. The problem with this is that new themes are difficult to co-ordinate across each instance and I can't "proof" new services at home on my own laptop. I never know if the slides are going to show correctly until I get to the church on Sunday!

Does anyone out there share my pain!?

ninjakiwi

I share your pain. It can be quite a hassle! Although instead of 3 different instances of OpenLP, I'd use 3 different themes for the different resolutions. I know that isn't a great solution, and doesn't solve the co-ordination across each resolution, but it should save some hassle only having to deal with one instance of OpenLP.

cameronag

Hmm, hadn't thought of that one, but at least it means there's a common source for all.

Off to do some filing.....!

ninjakiwi

If you have any ideas on how we could make it work better I can post them on the issue/feature tracker for you. It's a tricky topic as fonts do not scale nicely and different aspect ratios can mess up the output.

ninjakiwi

An idea I just thought of:

When you make a theme, you specify a fixed screen size/ratio. Then when you display on different size monitors, it scales the whole thing until it fits. This would mean part of a screen would not be used if the width to height ratio is not the same, but at least the theme would be consistent across any screen.

cameronag

Ninjakiwi,

That's interesting. Do you mean that this could be added to a future release?

My experience has been that themes don't scale properly between displays, and I don't recall seeing options to specify screen sizes, other than to specify X and Y offsets to replace the defaults for the positions of the main display and footers.

If it was possible to scale a theme automatically then it would be a huge improvement!

ninjakiwi

It's possible of course; But someone would need to code it. I've added a feature request for this here: https://gitlab.com/openlp/openlp/-/issues/828

AlanS

My experience using Windows 11 x64 on my Desktop and Laptop to configure the service at home, but when I take the Laptop to the church the OpenLP application opens up all chunky and unuseable, so I am not able to run the service, and I see that others also experience this same issue. As all users are not sufficiently computer literate to fiddle with behind the scenes settings, would a simpler way be to have an ability to choose the desired configuration from saved setups as you log into OpenLP?

PaulRowell

AlanS
The approach I use is to configure OpenLP at home, where I have only one display, so that it uses screen 1 as a display. I then set OpenLP to use a Custom geometry and set the size of the screen to math the resolution of the extended screen at church (in our case it is Full HD so 1920 wide and 1080 high. I also have the "Display if a Single Screen" ticked. I use the Left and Top settings to position the Custom Geometry Display Screen so that I can still click on the OpenLP interface. I'm fortunate to have a large screen at home so I can position the display screen in the bottom right hand corner and still have space at the Top and Left, but you can position the display so that not all of it is displayed if needed.
This is what my display settings look like:

lzhi6099

Install a virtual extended screen on your computer, set it as the openlp screen, install OBS, capture the virtual screen, and project it to the audience screen