# Suggestion for a simple way to allow fullscreen preview on ONE monitor



## Roy777 (May 14, 2020)

Hi friends,

Trying to capture and *preview *the whole display with Display Capture using the same monitor results in something like a frozen screen and crazy multiplication of the mouse cursor, the only solution for now is to use a second monitor, which sometimes you might not have and even when you do, you have to either turn your head and look at it while you record/stream or use the preview monitor as a primary monitor and have some delay.
from my tests, it should be very easy to preview whatever you do on *only one monitor.*

The only thing that (naturally) causes this multiplications is the capturing of the display itself, but most times you have other sources in addition to the display captured, like a webcam, images, text, lower thirds and any other source other than the display capture _which you already see on the monitor in any case. _so if you're using one monitor, you just don't need it previewed....

*So my idea is to preview everything in the scene BUT the display/game/window capture.*
In this way, you could preview anything in realtime without the multiplications. It could look like something like this:






Which means "Fullscreen Projector without Display/Game/Window capture (Preview)" Or any similar phrase like that..

Just for the record and for demonstration, I ran a test *capturing and previewing* a video capture device (webcam) and a plugin that shows your keystrokes (input-overlay) and *previewed it on the only monitor connected in fullscreen and* *without showing the display capture* (which if was on, would naturally cause the multiplications), and I got full screen, live, real-time, zero delay preview.
Of course the video ‏I've recorded here was the actual capture recorded to file but it looked exactly the same as the preview I saw on the full screen while I was recording it:






So now just imagine the black part would not exist and would be "transparent", showing *your actual display* and* not a preview of it,* but overlaid on TOP of it, you will see all other sources you have in the scene *as a preview*. which as my video above shows, should have zero delay so there should also not be any sync issues between the Display Capture and the other sources when you'll record/stream it.

It seems like a pretty simple and very useful feature to me, to be able to have a preview on one monitor in OBS right out of the box without the need for an additional monitor. saving on gear, constantly turning your head to see the preview, space etc'..  I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Like this post if you think it's a good idea :)

Thank you,

Roy.


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