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I have a dual monitor setup, but have no way to view the second monitor screen, unless i leave and go into a different area of the building, how can i view the contents of the second monitor output on my main primary screen?

Ideally i would like a live desktop background of my second monitor always playing as the default desktop image, but I could see using an app like VNC, VLC, but i presume this would put alot of overhead on my already busy CPU. Is there a more direct tap method, i.e. something i can just route the actual raw monitor feed to a tandem/slave viewer?

Thanks!

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I'm not sure I understand this right; is your 2nd monitor way, way far away from the first and you cannot see them both at the same time? As in, one is a public display (eg. airline departures and arrivals) and the other is a (sort of) regular desktop? I will assume this is the case.

I would use one of two options:

  • First, assuming you have two physical display outputs on your 'local' computer, I would try to use a splitter to have the 2nd display mirrored on a 2nd local monitor as well as on the existing remote monitor. Splitters exist for both VGA, DVI, and HDMI connectors so you should be able to find something suitable.

  • Alternatively (if you are not able to have two physical monitors locally), I would run a VLC instance with a capture command. This would allow you to capture (all or part of) the 2nd display, and VLC would show this capture as its video. You can then move and resize the VLC window on your primary display to suit your need. The VLC command to use for this is vlc screen:// --screen-fps=5 --screen-width=1920 --screen-height=1080 --screen-left=0 --screen-top=382 - I suppose the options are sufficiently self-explanatory; you will have to specify the left/top offset according to your logical monitor layout (in the "Display" control panel). This will eat some CPU, but you can perhaps adjust the FPS to a very low level.

Good luck!

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  • Thanks for the reply! I had hoped to find an more built-in way to just reroute/tap into the second video output and display it on the primary screen; either with xrandr or some native gpu picture-in-picture frame buffer kind of stuffs. Vnc was totally doable, and maybe only slightly resource hungry, but instead i just bit the dust and went with option 1; splitting the video to another local monitor. Splitting seemed a bit wastful too, especially in this day and age with the power of linux, but i gave up looking for a seamless option. Thanks again!
    – Jason Ferris
    Apr 28, 2018 at 5:22
  • Oh good. :-) I figured you might have had a solution by now, but the question was still open so I gave it a shot.
    – KlaymenDK
    Apr 29, 2018 at 5:24

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