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share custom area of screen

Teams full desktop screen sharing is not usable when one person has a wide or high resolution screen. Others who do not have a similar monitor have no way to see or zoom adequately. It would be ideal to have the ability to share a custom area of the screen similar to what Zoom meetings currently allow. As wide screen and curved monitors become more popular, this will become more important to address.

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  • Tom the user commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I am working with the team with 24-27in screens. Sharing the whole screen from 43'' 4k is impossible as it becomes too small to read. Sharing single window is really inconvenient as it does not work well with the software interface with multiple child windows (It needs to be shown over the video call). Older Skype had sharing by region. Zoom has sharing by region. Please implement this feature. Thank you in advance

  • SL commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I bought a large 49" monitor last week and wanted to set up a VM first to overcome this issue - seems to be a little bit overkill and even annoying to share what you want. Thus, I found the following workaround solution with VLC Media Player:

    Use VLCs desktop capture with the corresponding settings below. The left portion of my monitor shows the screencopy, in the right I'm working. Can be used together with FancyZones - VLC capture options have to be adapted to cover the Fancy Zone. FPS can be reduced. Be sure to enable "Minimal Interface" in VLC.
    Then, the VLC capture window can be shared in Teams...

    If you do not have a 49" ;-) the VLC capture window can be moved out of the Desktop view area. This this case I would recommend to define a Fancy Zone or simply draw a square on your Desktop Background Image - otherwise you will not know what you are actually sharing...

    The only drawback I found is that your mouse pointer tends to be a little bit nervous and to point you have to use your capture screen - otherwise the others are not able to see the pointer. Fullscreen mode (e.g. Powerpoint) can also be a problem...

    VLC capture options (to be adapted to your needs - see attached png) -

    e.g.

    :screen-fps=60.000000 :live-caching=1 :screen-left=2000 :screen-width=1920 :screen-height=1200

    For easy setup, the pixel position of FancyZone can be determined/observed during setting by tools that give the x_y pos of the mousepointer in realtime.

    -----------------------
    For Windows users: Create StartVideoCapture4Teams.bat on your Desktop for quick start:

    cd C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC
    start vlc.exe --qt-minimal-view --no-autoscale screen:// :screen-fps=5.000000 :live-caching=1 :screen-left=2000 :screen-width=1920 :screen-height=1200

    -----------------
    DX11 can be another option - this is my favorite setup for a large screen and side-by-side setup - since you do not have to care where your capture window is - it's always at a defined place and you can't move it.

    For users of 49" 5120x1440:

    start vlc.exe -I dummy --no-video-deco --no-embedded-video --video-y=1 --video-x=3200 screen:// :screen-fps=5.000000 :live-caching=1 :screen-left=1280 :screen-width=1920 :screen-height=1200

    --video-y=0 is not working for me - seems to be a bug in my VLC version

    Kill with Task manager or second script (taskkill /IM "vlc.exe" /F)

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This is a fundamental requirement with higher resolution monitors and how we are working now. So BIG thumbs up for this one.

  • Rodrigo Garcia commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Adding my vote, same issue as all the previous comments.
    Now I have a 34" ultra wide monitor which make it hard to share

  • David Beaton commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I whole heartedly agree! I just got myself an ultra wide to increase productivity from home (49" LG 49WL95C-W) and now that I have it the only downfall is when it comes to sharing my screen, which I do A LOT. Sharing just the app, and then resizing that application using Magnet (I am on a Mac) works well, unless you are bouncing between several apps.

    The only work around I have seen this week while frantically trying to find solutions is to run the ultra wide as 2 screens. What I mean by this is to manage the 5120x1440 screen space by splitting into 2 2560x1440 screens by using 2 HDMI's to my Mac, easily done and looks and feels great. When you go to share your desktop in Teams, you then have the option of just sharing one-half of your ultra wide screen. I am going back and forth almost daily now, and will eventually land on a solution that works for me, if Microsoft doesn't provide a customized sharing area for us which would be the cat's pyjamas...

  • Ehab Barouki commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This is a must-have now as most people are working from home including myself, using Microsoft Teams as our work platform, and I have a wide 49 inch monitor. Makes it really difficult to share my entire Desktop - stuck with toggling between different apps to share 1 by 1 when presenting something. Enabling screenshare using FancyZones sounds like a great solution!

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