JW Library starts second task to control second screen

[PaulvH]

Hi everyone,

 

I noticed that the JW library on Windows starts a second task (visible in the taskbar). When you hover the mouse over it, it shows a thumbnail with the year text (if no media is selected for display). Can anyone tell me why this is or why this is needed? It seems that this second task controls the second screen i.e. the TV monitors in the hall. Closing this task (happened to me once by accident) prevents you from displaying anything on the second screen. A restart of JWL fixes the problem. I'm asking this to better understand the role of this second task. I noticed once that when I clicked a media file for display it refused to display it on the second screen while it kept showing the year text. When I hovered the mouse over the second task, it showed the year text with a 'pause' symbol in the middle as if something was 'playing' preventing anything else from displaying or playing. Has anyone seen this behaviour as well?

[Hinata]

12 hours ago, PaulvH said:

Hi everyone,

 

I noticed that the JW library on Windows starts a second task (visible in the taskbar). When you hover the mouse over it, it shows a thumbnail with the year text (if no media is selected for display). Can anyone tell me why this is or why this is needed? It seems that this second task controls the second screen i.e. the TV monitors in the hall. Closing this task (happened to me once by accident) prevents you from displaying anything on the second screen. A restart of JWL fixes the problem. I'm asking this to better understand the role of this second task.

 

It is normal for the second monitor on JW Library to show the year text while no media is playing. The branch prefers that the Kingdom Hall uses electronic year text to be displayed on monitors through JW Library with this feature rather than physical year text in order to save donations if possible. During meetings, year texts should be displayed when no media is playing.

 

Of course, this only applies to the computers that are being used at the Kingdom Halls. If you are using a personal computer at home, you may disable the second monitor feature (i.e. second task) or even disable year text display in the settings menu. (Go to settings and uncheck "Use second monitor display." And check "display none" in the language for the year text.) This solution may help you if you do not prefer using second monitor function.

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by Hinata

[PaulvH]

Thanks Minwoo...I do understand the reason for the second screen in the hall and how to turn it off/on. What I was interested at is the technical reason for that second process in JWL. For example, a tool like VLC doesn't spin up a second task to drive the second screen and when it stops the media from playing, the year text nicely returns. I guess this is probably not the right forum to ask these kind of technical questions, but I was hoping someone could explain.

[Hinata]

4 hours ago, PaulvH said:

Thanks Minwoo...I do understand the reason for the second screen in the hall and how to turn it off/on. What I was interested at is the technical reason for that second process in JWL. For example, a tool like VLC doesn't spin up a second task to drive the second screen and when it stops the media from playing, the year text nicely returns. I guess this is probably not the right forum to ask these kind of technical questions, but I was hoping someone could explain.

 

I understand your question better now. I’m going to guess since JW Library is not an open source software, and unless someone here is actively associated with development of the program, we probably don’t know exact reason why. But as for us, we’ve noticed that even Zoom uses a second task — where for us the primary task displays the participant panels and the second task displays the video. So I’m pretty confident there’re reasons behind these choices.

 

You mentioned VLC, but as far as I’m aware, VLC actually also has a feature to turn on this “second task” by going into options and disabling “Integrate video into the main interface.” If I do that, there are two VLC windows that are on the screen similar to JWL. So maybe this is what JWL is choosing by default.

 

[PaulvH]

Thanks for your help. The way we've configured VLC will run a single task (admittedly the application probably does run multiple processes/threads in the background not seen on the interface). Incidentally, we have have turned the Integrate video in the main interface turned on. The reason is that if we don't, VLC will not display automatically on the second screen in full screen mode. With that we have turned VLC control panel display in full screen mode off to prevent the control panel to show up on the second screen. We have also turned Show pictogram in system tray on for if you don't there's no way to stop (only pause in the taskbar thumbnail) the media from the main interface. In this configuration, for as far as I can tell, there's really only a single task active though it flips back and forth between the main interface and the second display. I like the VLC approach as there is no window dragging needed to get content on the second display and playing media will immediately come up in full screen mode (both video and images). Stopping the media (from the icon in the system tray) will bring the year text back on the screen.