2 clients, 2 monitors, 1 pc?

[natesneat2000]

I plan on buying a dual-mon videocard, and want to konw if I can have 2 full-screen clients at once. I'll have to add another soundcard, too.

I just noticed that I'm a "Sage Expert" . Thru questions I seek ever more knowledge.

[stanger89]

I suppose the answer is maybe. First the good news. You can run two instances of SageClient (or one of SageTV and one of Client) on once PC. You should also be able to run one instance on each monitor. More good news... You should also be able to (possibly requireing girder) control each instance of Sage on it's own, but you'll need to use different remotes probably.

Now the tricky bit. Video on multiple monitors is tricky. It will depend on the card you buy, the drivers, and probably some luck. And you might have to resort to using the Default renderer (VMR7), Overlay and VMR9 tend to only work on one monitor at a time, and usually only the primary. you may be able to get away with using a different renderer on each screen.

Although IMO, you'd probably be better off running a MediaMVP for one of the clients.

[natesneat2000]

With a MediaMVP, however, we'd have to spend for a real LCD TV with svideo in, which I wasn't planning on doing. I suppose it would be a better picture - but it's from a computer anyways...
Does the MVP have a power ubtton? This has to do with my complicated remote plan, which you (plural) will one day know .

[Opus4]

There are a couple issues when running two SageTV windows on one PC:

1) If they are both clients, you will definitely have trouble controling each one separately, since you sent commands to the same window/class names. If you send keystrokes, it isn't as much of an issue, but then you have to make sure that the correct one has focus.

2) Volume control is tricky. Currently, changing the volume in one changes it in all other instances, since they all use the same volume controls. Your best bet, in my opinion, is to be able to control which one gets muted... but then you are back to issue #1: being able to determine which window is being controlled.

Some of this control issue was discussed in this thread: External volume controller for Multiple Sage instances?

Then there is an older post about settings when playing multiple videos here.

- Andy

[natesneat2000]

I read that post and would like to use RenameSageTV.

I'm not too worried about volume, due to the nature of my setup - IR transmitters & receivers, in-ceiling speakers, volume controls... hopefully it'll be nice and work well.

I am planning on getting this card: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...121-151&depa=1
(dual DVI outs)

Thanks for the links!

[Opus4]

Program sent. Run at your own risk. (I removed your publicly posted email address.)

I mentioned volume because I don't know if there is a way to get 2 separate autio outputs. The volume from both videos will play at the same time unless one is muted. Or, perhaps if there were 2 sound cards, then you could assign a different renderer/decoder to each instance & then control the volume on whatever device plays the audio.

That reminds me -- as in the recent MVP client thread... if you use 2 instances of the client for this, you may want to make a copy of the client dir so that each instance uses its own properties file & remembers its settings each time it is run. Otherwise, they will both use the same properties file & you will have to reset things each time if they are to be different.

- Andy

[stanger89]

Andy, you can select which audio renderer is used, so with two soundcards, you just pick a different renderer in each sage instance and you should be fine.

[Opus4]

Great -- that dawned on me as I was writing my last reply, but I can't test it.

That's definitely a reason to run from separate install dirs so that you don't have to keep reconfiguring them each time you run the 2 instances. That never occurred to me either until I read the MVP client stuff.

- Andy

[natesneat2000]

Can you specify a config file in the command line and not have to copy the whole directory? If not, this won't require another license, right?

Setting different audio renderer was exactly what I was thinking with 2 soundcards. Never thought about using same properties file messing this up, though.

Thanks for the program Opus; I'll be sure to let you know if it doesn't work, and maybe if it does work

[Opus4]

No, you can't specify a different config file.

You can run multiple client instances on one PC with a single license.

- Andy