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Topic: Laptop Screen Size for VDJ?

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What is the optimum Laptop Screen Size and Resolution for using VDJ?

Thanks
 
Posted Mon 08 Jun 09 @ 1:01 am
That really depends on what your own preferences are and especially what skin you will be using.

Personally I like a 1200x800 15.4 inch widescreen laptop because its not so bulky as the 17 inch displays can be. I prefer widescreen so I can have more info showing on the database. Easier to search and sort especially when you have a playlist window open and locked in. Again, some will say 17 inch is better for their own reasons there is no optimal.

As for skins I prefer one that still shows the windows bar at the bottom so I need a 1200x768 skin.

Loving the new v6 widescreen, most skins when maximised to a widescreen display have looked too washy or blocky this one looks nice! Just wishing there was a good widescreen + video skin I liked. Each to their own.
 
It's personal preference; for example I use a laptop with a 17" screen running at 1920x1200 with a skin designed for that resolution.
 
1280 x 800 seems to be the norm for laptops.

The new V6 skin and the fantastic Vmix5.4 are both 1280 x 800 and are great!

Keith
 
LCD screens have their own resolution (by design)

while it is quite handy to make it display your desktop bigger, the lcd screen needs to 'fill' the pixcels on the screen to make it show 1024x768 (per say). in most cases this makes the image on screen look blocky, nd may cause eye strain...


have a look in the advanced settings for the graphics card for something called 'native resolution'
this is the best setting for any screen. (Laptop/LCD/Plasma/etc)

so in answer to your question: There is no ONE setting that wouls work on EVERY laptop.
THis is also the reason for all the available skins being desgigned in all different sizes.

You do have 2 options, though, without changing your monitor settings..

1. Simply press MAXIMIZE on your favourite skin.
VDJ6 has the ability to expand any skin to FIT to your screen.

2. Use the Skin Resizer utility.
In the skins section, there is a tool to permanantly resize skins for you. Give JeremK a shout on his sxcelent utility.
 
1440x900 is what many of the higher end 17" laptops are shipping with such as my Toshiba Qosmio X305 series.

SBDJ, what kind of lappy do you you have that has such high res, 1920x1200? Wow!


DJ RuDe
 
i ha a Fujitsu latop until last december, it had 1280x900 resolution.

my net book does 1024x600

and my 32in LCD does 1920x1080...
 
Well yeah, on a 32" LCD, mine too but a laptop's built in screen? That's pretty good for a 17" screen, I thought my 1440x900 was good, but resolution higher than that on smaller screen like a 17" the difference is almost negligible. High res on larger screens is where it makes a difference. I have a 5 year old 57" with 1080i and a brand new 60" 1080p and even though the older TV has an excellent picture the 60" with 1080p blows it away! This is proof that some things we think that can't be improved upon can be!


RuDe
 
DJRudeDoGG wrote :
SBDJ, what kind of lappy do you you have that has such high res, 1920x1200? Wow!


My gig laptop is a Dell XPS M1730.

My backup laptop is a Dell Precision M90 and thats 1920x1200 too :)
 
SBDJ, could you send me a link to the 1920x1200 skin? I'm running off an XPS M1710 (previous gen XPS) with a T7200 2.0GHz chip and 4 gigs of RAM. The screen is the same though (17" WUXGA 1920x1200 native resolution).

Another question for the more knowledgeable users out there:

Why is the CPU usage so much higher when using a resized or maximized skin?

For instance, if I'm using the default VDJ 6 skin (doesn't matter if I'm using the regular, hi-res or widescreen VDJ 6 skin). Running it as a window in its native size, my CPU usage is generally between 3-10%, usually bouncing around the 6-7% mark even while playing a track. Obviously while loading a song, that figure tends to jump, usually to somewhere around the mid-40% mark till the track's waveform is fully loaded.

VDJ 6 now allows users to resize skins on the fly. If I do this, or if I maximize the skin, CPU usage jumps dramatically, hovering around ~60% just while sitting idle or while playing a track. Loading a track causes CPU usage to jump to 99%. Even though I've tried playing at the club for ~30 minutes with a maximized skin and there weren't any noticeable pops or glitches, I'm still not comfortable with the CPU usage being that high so I tend to run it as a window in the skins native resolution. Obviously, with my laptop's display set to display its native resolution, that makes the VDJ window pretty small (yes, all the icons on my desktop are really small at this resolution).

Now with other programs/applications like Internet Explorer for example, there is no difference in CPU usage with different sized windows or with the IE window maximized. Even with Windows Media Player playing a HD video, there is no noticeable difference between playing the video in a window 1/4 of total screen size vs. playing it in a maximized window (CPU usage tends to hover around 30% while playing HD vids on Media Player). Why is it different with VDJ?


Max
 
Well you almose answered that yourself in that last post.

vdj is resizing the skin on the fly, so that needs some cpu power.

VDJ kins are made of 2 files. the first is a picture of all the graphics you see, and the 2nd file is a bit of code to make all the graphical parts work.
normaly, the coordinates match up when vdj is in a widow, but when you maximize it, vdj needs to do some number crunching to work out where the graphics have moved to on your screen.

I still recomend the skin resizer, if your CPU levels are gettin a little high.

Also, you might e running low on chip ram? consider upgrdes there.
 


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