Today I already had a nice (ok, for the others it was perhaps not so nice) experience of problems with new media:
A group was giving a presentation and they wanted to show a video. The sound was working, but the video would only show up on their laptop screen, not on the projector. We (the audience) could see the media player, but the rest of the “screen” was black. Did you ever experience the same? What is the problem here? How could it be solved?
The group “solved” it by simply turning the laptop around. Ok, nice try, but with 40 people in a room… I think this works with students at university, but with pupils?!
What do you think? How would you react in such a situation?
It might be a good idea to check if the video out of the laptop is switched on at all. Try Fn + F5. Thats the combination I have to use with my laptop.
Do you know which media player was used? I found out that the open source software VLC media player works well in cases where the default Windows Media Player has problems. The VLC player is part of the “Digitale Schultasche” and can be used right from the pen drive.
Thank you for your comments!
@sirhannes:
This wasn’t the problem, we could see the presentation as well as the media player as such later. It was just the moving parts that would’nt show up.
@annamariagallus:
They used the Windows Media Player. But someone in the audience gave the same hint as you. They tried it with another player (not the VLC), but that didn’t work either. Perhaps VLC would really have been the best choice. I’ll recommend the Digital Schoolback to them!
From what I understand, this happens when the laptop’s video card isn’t powerful enough to output the video to two devices at the same time. I believe the workaround is to make the projector the primary output. The video should play on the big screen but will no longer show on the laptop.
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