Way to crop the visible area of a display?

[darkswordsman17]

I have a display that was cracked, rendering about the bottom 1/5 of the display unusable (the display functions normally, but full width of the bottom portion has black lines that sometimes kinda jitters with color - I figure I'd just get some black construction paper and cover it as it is nearly perfectly uniform, and looking close you can see a bit of light bleed from where the LCD itself cracked, but otherwise the rest is in great shape looking like it normally does). Since its a 16:10 1920x1200 display, so it already had some extra vertical pixels, and so could potentially still function as a 2nd display for watching video where it'd be doing largely 16:9 or even 2.35:1 content. Doing some Googling it was a mix of hacks and utilities that were intended for other uses (and so much of that stuff you have to be careful with), or recommendations like using the Magnify tool that's built into Windows (which I tried, but couldn't get it working right on that display).

I saw some people show screenshot to some utility in the Nvidia drivers that seemed to do what I want, and some others said Intel's integrated stuff could as well. I'm using an RX 480 with an AMD CPU though. I looked but couldn't find anything, and I tried seeing if I could set a custom resolution or anything like that but it wouldn't work.

Does anyone know what that feature would be called and if its possible in AMD drivers? Ideally it'd let me crop the display to the visible portion, where Windows would then treat that as a display of whatever resolution that ends up being, and I can drag windows to it and fullscreen and it'd only apply it to the visible area (as it is now, it recognizes the full display). Or if there's another utility that you can confirm would accomplish what I want. Ideally something that would save that so I wouldn't have to set it every time I restart or anything.

Also could people with Nvidia card (especially say 1050-1060 level cards) check and see if they can accomplish that in the Nvidia drivers. If nothing else I might would see if I can find someone to swap cards with.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that there is a desktop window manager, DisplayHD, or DisplayFusion, or something, that would let you set "keep out" areas for windows.

 

[Sgt. York]

How about the monitor's OSD? Isn't one of the functions to resize the top, bottom and sides of the monitor?

 

[darkswordsman17]

I'll keep looking at utilities. DisplayFusion seems like it should be able to do what I want, but they apparently jacked up the price (was $10 and is now $35) over the years, and there's so much other stuff that it does that I see people say it can end up being more of a hassle and claims of it being "bloated" when you just want it to do something simple (which is an aspect I was hoping to avoid, so many utilities add "features" that you don't need and add themselves to context menus and embed themselves where you don't need them). But others say it works well. I might try the free trial (I hate installing a bunch of utilities to try and out and then uninstall as that often causes issues in my experience).

Looking at the usual old utilities for AMD/ATi stuff most of them are old and I don't think would have what I'm looking for.

How about the monitor's OSD? Isn't one of the functions to resize the top, bottom and sides of the monitor?

Only options for stuff like that is to change the aspect ratio (from 16:10 to 5:4 or 4:3, so not even 16:9 which might would've at least made it more useable).

I did notice in the display settings (where it tells you more advanced stuff) that the monitor is actually 2080x1235 pixels and is shifted to the center. I tried adjusting that stuff with custom resolution but it said its not supported by the display and wouldn't let me do it. Not sure if it'd be possible to force on DVI (currently using DisplayPort on it).

I tried EyeFinity as well to see if it might let me adjust things but it basically only lets you auto do stuff and doesn't give much of anything to adjust.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Just found a utility that I believe does just what I want (and only that).

DesktopCoral:
https://www.donationcoder.com/software/mouser/other-windows-apps/desktopcoral

Lets you partition off part of the display so that full screen doesn't use it. Not perfect (as its potentially possibly for small sized windows to get lost in broken part of the display when not full screen), but otherwise should work fine. Its also freeware (have to update the free license every couple months or donate to get a permanent license). And can tell it to start with Windows.

Darn, not quite. It'll keep maximized windows within the bounds of that, but if you fullscreen video players it goes back to trying to use the whole panel.

Looks like its not even quite 200 (seems right around 185) pixels that are out on it too, so it'd be close to being able to fill the still functioning part with 16:9 video.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Turns out I could just resize the task bar on the 2nd monitor and accomplish the same thing (well for my needs, that other program was intended for some special use where people would use an area of the screen as like a scratchpad and wanted to be able to keep it in view at all times).

Unfortunately, when doing full screen on video players still reverts to using the full display, so it still doesn't resolve my problem.

And seems that the Nvidia thing (Grids) has been punted to only being available on Quadro cards after 2010, so probably couldn't do that by switching to Nvidia.

Some other recommendations I've seen is WinSplit (which got discontinued and the people that make a similar program called MaxTo took over their domain so I guess MaxTo would be what I'd try), but its $30 as well and I think is more complicated than I'm needing, and I'm still not sure if it'll work for what I need (limit fullscreening video programs). And some others (like using Object Dock, which I think I own a license for it from like 15 years ago when trying to make WinXP look like MacOSX was all the rage), that I'm almost completely certain won't prevent the video full screening problem.

I missed out on someone selling a 23" version of the same monitor (which I checked, and its right about a 23" area still viewable so kinda funny). There was someone selling a 27" Dell 1080p IPS for $85 that I was considering, but I don't believe it had a standard VESA mount capability so would have to buy one of those adapters for like $30 off Amazon. Will keep an eye out for what pops up especially if I can't find anything to work right. If I'd had the disposable money, I would've bought the 55" 4K LG OLED that someone was selling for $500.

Maybe DisplayFusion will be on a Steam sale sometime and can nab it for cheaper (just hope that version wouldn't require Steam to run...).

 

[darkswordsman17]

Right click the source in OBS -> Filters, add a crop filter. It is planned to make this easier in the future!

I'm not using OBS for anything so that's not gonna help me. I could probably work something like that for MPC-BE (although it'll still be a hassle), but I need something that would work for YouTube/Netflix/Hulu/etc.