On systems which support and provide multiple monitors Opus allows you to specify a monitor on which a publication or a chapter will appear. Thus you can display different chapters on different monitors allowing different content to be displayed and synchronized easily.
Most commonly this feature will be used to allow a laptop screen to be used as an autocue displaying speaker prompts while the main presentation runs on the projector or a separate screen. It thereby avoids the need for paper based notes or crib cards. It can be used in a similar way for training seminars.
In addition this feature allows for some very sophisticated solutions. It is useful for exhibitions, multimedia installations and multiscreen presentations as it allows you to run a single publication which displays different output in different areas. Thus some screens could be playing video while others offer interactive material and everything can be run from only one publication on one computer thereby making it much easier to synchronise everything. This type of setup is most likely to be used for product launches, museums, shopping centres, and exhibition displays but can even be used for entertainment venues or creative displays.
Windows will automatically try to use multiple monitors if they are available. The options for this are provided on the Settings section of the Display dialog in the Windows Control panel if the multiple monitors are detected.
Or most recent laptops this is as simple as plugging a second monitor into the additional monitor output of the laptop. The new monitor will become monitor 2 while your laptop screen is monitor 1.
Note that using the numbering on this dialog (or using the Identify button which displays a number on each monitor) will allow you to discover which number you should use when selecting the monitor in your Opus publication .
Note:
For the Opus multiple monitor publication to work you also need to have the Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor switched on for the additional monitors
The option is provided on the Window tab of both Publication Properties and Chapter Properties. Simply select the monitor index from the drop down list provided.
All the other properties will be retained so if the chapter is set to appear in a window which fills the screen it will fill the screen on its chosen monitor. If it is set to display in a small window it will display as a small window on the chosen monitor. If you chose to display a chapter in the Main publication window then the relevant settings for the Publication Properties will hold.
Note:
The key thing to remember when using multiple monitors for publications is that the relevant section will only display if it has an action to display. You might assume that the first page to be displayed on any particular monitor would appear by default but this is not the case.
The first page of a publication will display automatically as it does with any other publication and this page will appear on the monitor which has been allocated to that section via the Publication or Chapter properties but the second or subsequent sections must be specifically shown using the Show action or a Go to Page action.
You can use any number of different monitors but these must be then available on the system you run the publication on and indexed in the same order using the setup for the display running the publication. If a window or chapter specifies a monitor that is not available on the target system, the window will open on the default monitor instead.