Linking Windows 10 to a projector for a theater show and what is seen

meridius · 15 Dec 2023

Hi,

It's been a long time since I've been on this forum but here goes...

I may have to take charge of using my laptop with Windows 10 Pro 22H2 for a theater performance with the aim of projecting the computer's screen onto a professional projector and this will happen via an HDMI cable which is linked to a projector on another floor. I have already seen the technician adjust the projector's settings in the projection room and he has his own Mac (unfortunately...) laptop and I think he also installed some software in it for this task. It is possible that he will not do this during the show and the unenviable task of this will fall on me and I will have to bring my own laptop to do this.

At home I tested the following:

- Move all photographs into PowerPoint with the aim of a full screen with no mouse movements showing on the projector and just using the keyboard arrows to go forwards and backwards, with the aim of mainly just going forwards from one photograph to the next until the end of the show.

- Link the HDMI cable from the laptop to the TV screen as a test. Sound and images output to the TV screen so I guess this is correct.

- Remove all additional unnecessary sound such as for volume increases, message warnings etc. in Windows so this does not go through the HDMI cable and/or a theater speaker.

The questions I have at this stage are the following:

1. Is PowerPoint the best app to do this in? Many of the photos are high quality which should not be lost on the projector. The most important thing is that the public must not see mouse movements from my laptop and I'm not sure how to move from one photograph to the other using only the keyboard in the Photos app in Windows.

2. An additional complication may be that music needs to be played on and off for the introduction and between scenes. If I use any media player like VLC which is my preferred application then the audience will see my mouse movements and I will have to move from VLC to PowerPoint or Photos etc. For the audience to see this would be unacceptable and I cannot really time the music into PowerPoint as I must do this manually and account for power cuts as well (yes we have them...) so my laptop's battery must be fully charged and I hope their projector will not mess up. Of course I will ask their technical staff for advice but in the meantime is it realistic to have a split screen system (how?) on my laptop so that the audience sees only the slides but I can also operate VLC by moving the sound up and down on another screen so that the audience does not see these movements at all. Or is there any other way to do this?

Many thanks for any advice...

Try3 · 15 Dec 2023

Do consider this alternative that uses no applications at all, just Windows [and it can be tested with your TV first so you'll know it is all ready]:-

1 Preps
1.1 Preps well beforehand
- In File explorer, put all your pictures in the same folder [you don't need to import them into PowerPoint or anything else]
- Rename them if necessary so that alphabetical order matches your desired display order
- ~~Set your power options to keep the display on [or at least keep it on longer than you are going to dwell on any individual picture]~~ Sorry, that's not necessary. I had forgotten that this procedure overrides any Power options, Display off setting.

1.2 Preps in the presentation theatre
- Connect to the projector through HDMI
- Set your display to external display only - DisplaySwitch.exe /external
- Check the projector results. If necessary, go to Settings, System, Display for adjustments.
- Go to that folder in File explorer
- Sort the folder into Details view, Name order by clicking on that column header

2 Give the presentation
- Select any picture in the folder I always select the first picture but that's not necessary as it will always start showing them at the first picture whichever one you've selected.
- The Manage menu appears, click on Picture tools, Slide show
- The full screen mode is used [no menus or other rubbish are displayed]
- Immediately, right-click, Pause
- Turn off your mouse [just to avoid accidental use]
You now have the slide show under the control of your left & right arrow keys.
Each time you press the right-arrow key, the slide show will advance one picture.
You can also, if necessary, use the left-arrow key to step back a picture.
You can escape at any time by pressing the Escape key.

You might want the first and last pictures to be blank ones [or title ones] so that you can get everything displaying before the audience arrives [blank screen or a screen with the presentation's title] and can leave everything displaying at the end until after the audience has left [again, just a blank picture or one showing the title].

I have used this method for presenting pictures in these formats: .png, .jpg, .webp

Best of luck,
Denis

meridius · 16 Dec 2023

Thanks a lot. I tried doing that with my pictures and it worked as a slideshow in Windows as you wrote... I will check the Settings later on when I connect the laptop to the TV with the HDMI cable.

Since this post I found out from the theatre's technical information that the mixer they use is the Si Expression 3:
Si Expression | Soundcraft - Professional Audio Mixers | English (US)

From memory of a previous show and if I'm correct mp3 format music can be stored on the main USB socket on the mixer. I need to check this. Irrespective I think it isn't a good idea to run the video and the audio from the same PC and we will have to communicate this with the technicians. I attach photos of the mixer. You can see the USB port on it and the sockets behind.

Linking Windows 10 to a projector for a theater show and what is seen-screenshot-2023-12-16-064729.png

Linking Windows 10 to a projector for a theater show and what is seen-screenshot-2023-12-16-064810.png

If this does not work we will have to see if another laptop can link to the mixer which is not ideal but I suppose a possibility.

Try3 · 16 Dec 2023

I know nothing about mixers but
- You can definitely play music whilst running a slide show,
- You might, as you say, have the option of attaching a USB stick to the mixer that contains a set of files that it could read & play.
Neither of these two methods would allow music & video to be synced but that's not a problem if the music is just there for background.

All the best,
Denis

meridius · 16 Dec 2023

Thanks for this information. There's a lot to learn but luckily the performance is on just after the new year so I have time to make all the mistakes at home now...

I never thought of running music in the background but it is a possibility too. I suppose running it on a loop and reducing the volume when the actor comes on stage and increasing it between scenes is a possibility as well. Nevertheless I think that should be taken care of by another technician.

Using a slide show in Microsoft Photos works as you say but it isn't that sophisticated. I tried using PowerPoint as well but once images are processed in other applications they sometimes become lossy and each application has its pros and cons, with some automatically scaling and increasing the surface area of the photos and others not. There are also scaling and formatting background matters that I need to look into. I was wondering whether you have any experience of other, maybe third party, slide show applications that I can test as well?

Try3 · 17 Dec 2023

meridius said:

I never thought of running music in the background

I only mentioned that because you wrote about an audio mixer.
And I agree that music would need to be well co-ordinated with the speaker's word & movements. That can be difficult to do well & can be appalling if it's done badly.

meridius said:

Using a slide show in Microsoft Photos works as you say

I only wrote about File explorer.
- Using File explorer avoids any risk of lossy conversions to specific applications' needs [such as importing into PowerPoint].
- Using File explorer also avoids any risk of unexpected picture rotations.
I know nothing about Microsoft Photos or other presentation tools.
If you were doing anything other than show just pictures, you'd have to consider presentation tools such as MSOffice PowerPoint. I haven't even had to use that one for years.

About unexpected picture rotations
You might sometimes notice that a picture appears rotated if you open it in some particular application.
It's an oddity I've seen more than once but have never understood***.
So, whatever decision you make, do run through the whole presentation using the chosen tool looking just at whether pictures are the right way up.

In the case of using File explorer, the pictures appear the same way they are displayed in File explorer's right-hand pane [whether you have that set to View menu, Panes, Details pane or Preview pane].

FE landscape example and FE portrait example

Linking Windows 10 to a projector for a theater show and what is seen-fe-landscape-example.png

and

Linking Windows 10 to a projector for a theater show and what is seen-fe-portrait-example.png

For example, whether I am looking at these photos in File explorer Details view or through its Slide show the rotation in both cases is the same.
- So I can quickly run through in a File explorer folder checking each one knowing that it will be the same for the Slide show. And being in a File explorer folder lets you check file dates & other details.
- If I do check them this way, I generally switch File explorer's right-hand pane to View menu, Panes, Preview pane because the picture is displayed bigger that way so it can be easier to see everything clearly.

If you do find that a picture is not shown the right-way up in File explorer then you can rotate it [multiple times if necessary].
I generally make a full backup copy of all the pictures before rotating even a single one.

Linking Windows 10 to a projector for a theater show and what is seen-fe-rotation.png

Once you've checked them in a File explorer folder then you can move on to checking them in the Slide show so that you can consider scaling.
The built-in MSPaint can be used to resize pictures.
I've just tested doing this in MSPaint and it seems straightforward. I normally use MSOffice Picture manager 2007 for this but the utility is no longer generally available.

*** I've just found this explanation which I had forgotten about - Why Your Photos Don’t Always Appear Correctly Rotated - HTG

Best of luck,
Denis

meridius · 17 Dec 2023

Thanks a lot for the detail in your post. It's very useful and it appears as though it's always the small things that catch us out which is the difference between a professional looking project or otherwise...

I've just bought Office 2021 Pro Plus and I want to test its version of PowerPoint. I'm still running Office 2007 and change is now overdue.

I also need to learn as much as possible about how Windows works with projectors and mixers. All in all it's a good opportunity to learn something new.

Thanks once again for all your advice. 😀

Try3 · 17 Dec 2023

And, just as you were posting, I was adding this

*** I've just found this explanation which I had forgotten about - Why Your Photos Don’t Always Appear Correctly Rotated - HTG

Denis

Try3 · 17 Dec 2023

meridius said:

I've just bought Office 2021 Pro Plus and I want to test its version of PowerPoint. I'm still running Office 2007 and change is now overdue.

So you also have MSOffice Picture manager 2007.

Code:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\OIS.EXE

I find it a very useful tool for picture cropping, resizing, jpg compression level adjustments [to make file sizes smaller], ...
I had to clear everything else out of the way to just display pictures only and then it became simple to use.

Linking Windows 10 to a projector for a theater show and what is seen-mso-pm-.png

I still use MSOffice 2007 as my main Office version.
I bought Office2021 and installed it on a secondary computer so I could understand what people were talking about when discussing new versions.
I don't like MSOffice 2021. They've degraded the appearance of Outlook to such a degree that I find it unusable. They've also degraded the appearance of several other things but it's Outlook that really takes the biscuit.

The only problem that I have with MSOffice 2007 is that there are newer email elements that it does not understand.
If I raise a query with WD [about, say, a new disk], I change Outlook settings to leave a copy on the server so, when I get what appears to be a blank email from WD, I can go online in my browser or check email in Outlook 2021 to see what they have written.
I am not aware of anybody else using whatever email elements WD uses. I don't get blank emails from anybody else.

All the best,
Denis

meridius · 17 Dec 2023

I've used Picture Manager before and almost forgot about it until you mentioned it just now...

I'll have to try Office 2021 and see for myself whether I like it or not. For many years I used Office 2003 which was so simple but is probably now completely obsolete.

Since our posts the technicians woke up and got back to us. They want all the pictures in 16:9 aspect ratio. They recommend QLab (QLab) for the problems I have been having but it is only Mac compatible. I will test some equivalents for Windows. What I found online was text which stated: "QLab will hide the mouse if it ever wanders on to a video surface". I didn't realise this was possible at all, so the main problem of worrying about mouse movements could be solved and hopefully they will take over some technical aspects of the performance which is after all supposed to be their job...

For picture editing I can use GIMP on a simple level but sometimes even doing simple tasks can be laborious and time consuming. Nevertheless those who have taken the time to learn it will benefit from it. Of course there is Adobe Photoshop but I don't want to pay for a monthly subscription...