Copying second sceeen to be displayed on first screen

Question

I'm developing an application that utilizes 2 screens, using ubuntu 12.04. The monitor is back to back, one side to the operator, the other facing toward customer.

The problem is, on both monitor i need to play the exact same video using mplayer, BUT on the first screen, by the admin, i also need to display a small window (my app) to control the video, like play pause etc. The control is for video on both screen. So for this, i dont think i can use clone monitor setting because the second screen is only use to display the video playing.

My question is,

1. Does mplayer has the ability to duplicate video playing on both screen?
2. If no 1 is not applicable, does any application exists on ubuntu to capture and display whatever is displayed on second screen to be then played back on the first, at realtime as of it is duplicated.
3. If both above sounds crazy and impossible, any suggestions please?

Edit: Let me give a better picture. Let say i'm opening openoffice word and calculator. I need word to be shown on both screen, but the calculator on shown on first screen.

Thank you.

Answer 1

First, open up monitor config - it's in Start > Settings > Settings Manger, then open the Display item. https://i.stack.imgur.com/ayCTI.png Make sure both your displays are on.

Then, open a terminal and run this:

xrandr

The output will look something like this:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2464 x 900, maximum 4096 x 4096 LVDS1 connected 1024x600+1440+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 220mm x 129mm 1024x600 60.0*+ 65.0 800x600 60.3 56.2 640x480 59.9 VGA1 connected 1440x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 408mm x 255mm 1440x900 59.9*+ 75.0 1280x1024 75.0 60.0 1280x960 60.0 1280x800 74.9 59.8 1152x864 75.0 1024x768 75.1 70.1 60.0 832x624 74.6 800x600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2 640x480 72.8 75.0 66.7 60.0 720x400 70.1

Then, run the following, changing VGA1 and LVDS1 to match the appropriate display:

xrandr --output VGA1 --left-of LVDS1

Note that you can move change --left-of to --right-of.

Now, it should work, but you've still got one problem.

It will disappear after you logout. So, you need to add it to your login items.

Head over to Start > Settings > Settings Manger, then open "Session and Startup", add the above command to your login items, and you're good to go! https://i.stack.imgur.com/UudgY.png