EPrime display settings for widescreen monitors

[Speech Perception Research Lab NYU]

Hi all,

Our lab just got a new experimental laptop which has a slightly different screen size than our other 2.  We run about 6 different experimental tasks in EPrime on all 3 of these machines, and when we use the new one with the wider monitor, all of the images and text get stretched horizontally.  I understand that I can fix the problem by changing the properties for each image on EPrime, but I'm wondering if there is some more general setting that I can change for the one computer so that images won't be stretched and I won't need to change individual settings within each script.  Our old laptops use a display setting of 1024x768 pixels, and this new one uses 1366x768.  Changing the display settings for the computer itself doesn't fix the problem, so I wonder if I can do it within EPrime.  In PowerPoint, for example, when presentations are viewed fullscreen on a widescreen monitor, it fills the sides with blank space so that everything can be done on a standard display size and avoid stretching.  I'm wondering if I there is an equivalent setting within EPrime.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Josh

[David McFarlane]

Josh,

What version of E-Prime do you use? If using EP2, please note the
following statement that I got from PST Web Support when I
asked: "E-Prime 2.0 allows any resolution supported by your video
card. The suggestions in the dropdown menus do use typical 4:3
values, but you can type in any other value you want to use provided
they are supported by your video card." As far as I can tell, this
feature has still not been publicly documented.

So, try setting your Display resolution to 1366x768, ignoring the
dropdown suggestions. E-Prime should properly fill the screen and
use properly square-shaped pixels. Or just try using "Match desktop
resolution at runtime" = Yes, which in this case should achive the same effect.

Hope that helps.

-----
David McFarlane
E-Prime training
online: http://psychology.msu.edu/Workshops_Courses/eprime.aspx
Twitter: @EPrimeMaster (https://twitter.com/EPrimeMaster)

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[Speech Perception Research Lab NYU]

Thanks so much for the response David!  I do use E-Prime 2.0, but not sure where that dropdown menu is.  Where is the option for "Match desktop resolution" located?  And when you say to switch the display to 1366x768, do you mean within EPrime?  Sorry...I'm a bit new to this.

Thanks!

[molinae]

Hi Josh,

I use the 'Match desktop resolution' option in several screen sizes and it works fine. Just go to Edit>Experiment on the main menu, then go to the Devices tab and edit the Display one. A new windows should appear where you can set this property and also the screen resolution.

-- Enrique

[Paul Groot]

You can find the display settings in the experiment->devices->display dialog. The screen dumps in the attached pdf show how this looks like in the current pro-release. You also might have to rearrange the layout of your screens a.s.a. you change the display resolution. (This depends on the properties that are shown on the second page of the attachment.) If the experiments should be compatible with 4:3 and wide screen, then you should carefully think about using relative positioning, adaptive font sizes, absolute image extents, relative frame widths, etc... I also advise to start using the new StartupInfo files, which allow you to specify device settings (and other attributes) by using a separate file.

Unfortunately E-Prime doesn't offer a global setting to fix aspect ratio errors. Perhaps PST could implement something similar to Presentation (i.e. supporting a user defined coordinate system).

best
paul

2012/10/4 Speech Perception Research Lab NYU <speech...@gmail.com>

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[Kaitlyn T]

Hello,

I'm having a similar problem. I was wondering if anyone had an answer to Josh's original question, as to whether there is a general setting in Windows that can be changed to fix display resolution in E-Prime, rather than changing each script individually. To maintain consistency across multiple laptops, we chose a display setting that resulted in a square display with black space on the right and left side of the screen. This was working fine on a normal and widescreen monitor, but we recently updated the normal laptop and now the E-Prime display is stretched out to fill the whole screen. The best solution we've found so far is to choose "Yes" for "Match desktop resolution at runtime." However, this is problematic for two reasons: 1) although the images are no longer distorted, they are not the same size as they were with the previous settings, which is a problem with consistency, and 2) this solution involves changing settings in ~25 E-Prime files, and having slightly different versions of the files on different computers. I think there must be a general Windows setting that controls this issue, seeing as this only changed when we updated the Windows system. Note we did not change the OS (XP), but just changed hard drive and RAM.

If anyone has any ideas, I would really appreciate it!

Kaitlyn

[Paul Groot]

Hi Kaitlyn,

This depends on the software options of the graphics card of the laptop. Most drivers have options to select the display modes: scale full screen on/off and keep aspect ratio on/off. Scaling is in some cases acceptable, but only if the aspect ratio is unchanged. Those options can typically be configured using manufacturer-specific software. For example Radeon graphics cards come with Catalyst Control Center, but other manufacturers offer similar configuration software. Another workaround is to connect an external monitor that has the desired resolution. However, video timing might be less accurate in that case.

Best

Paul

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