Monitor resolution detected incorrectly, making sizes wrong

Yes, there is a known problem when using non-standard monitor configurations where MuseScore can get confused about what the resolution of your display is. Is there also a second monitor connected differently? If so, disconnect it and things should be better.

Thanks Marc for bringing me here to the right post.
I have the following monitor-resolution problem:

1) Laptop resolution: 1600 x 900, Musescore-AppImage-display works fine.

2) Television connected by VGA: resolution: 1366 x 768, Musescore-AppImage-display with very small symbols, Musescore installed display is fine.

Some information on my system, perhaps helpful:

user@debian:~$ uname -a
Linux debian 4.1.0-trunk-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 4.1.2-1~exp1 (2015-07-17) i686 GNU/Linux

user@debian:~$ gnome-shell --version
GNOME Shell 3.14.4

user@debian:~$ lspci -nnk | grep -i VGA -A2
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GT216GLM [Quadro FX 880M] [10de:0a3c] (rev a2)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:1521]
Kernel driver in use: nvidia

Thanks for help.

When connecting the television - is that on the laptop? So you have both the laptop screen and the television connected at the same time? If you disable the laptop display then restart MuseScore, does the situation improve?

I'm thinking we will probably want to add a command line option to override the detected monitor resolution so as to be able to handle unusual situations more flexibly. But I'd also like to try to figure out if there is some way we can better detect the actual resolution in these corner cases.

The television is connected to the laptop via VGA. By default, we deactivated the laptop-display in the monitor-settings and the symbols are small.
If we activate the laptop and the television in the monitor-settings at the same time, the display of the symbols works on the laptop display but not on the television. It works only, if I drag the open Musescore window from the laptop to the television.

I don't have any particular insight into why the automatic monitor resolution isn't working correctly in these cases, but at least we should provide a command line override, so I have implemented one in this PR:

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/2636

I have the exact problem described by iNord_Composer in another report that was closed as a duplicate of this one. For me, on my laptop screen, items on the Start Center are so small that they cannot be read. I am new to MuseScore, so I have only a few scores and can figure out which one I want, but once I get a large number I will not be able to find what I am looking for. I can make the Start Center window larger by dragging on the corners, but the items in the window stay the same size. I don't want to use the "-X (scale-factor)" work-around, since (a) other elements of the program are large enough (the Start Center is the only thing that I have noticed that is affected), and (b) the Start Center would have to be 10-times larger to appear normal.

I have no external monitors or televisions attached to my laptop.

I have a current-model (purchased in February 2017) Dell XP-15 with a 4K display. The resolution is set to 3480 x 2160. The display adapter is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX-1050.

I have attached a screen capture of the program with the Start Center.

I have the exact problem described by iNord_Composer in another report that was closed as a duplicate of this one. For me, on my laptop screen, items on the Start Center are so small that they cannot be read. I am new to MuseScore, so I have only a few scores and can figure out which one I want, but once I get a large number I will not be able to find what I am looking for. I can make the Start Center window larger by dragging on the corners, but the items in the window stay the same size. I don't want to use the "-X (scale-factor)" work-around, since (a) other elements of the program are large enough (the Start Center is the only thing that I have noticed that is affected), and (b) the Start Center would have to be 10-times larger to appear normal.

I have no external monitors or televisions attached to my laptop.

I have a current-model (purchased in February 2017) Dell XP-15 with a 4K display. The resolution is set to 3480 x 2160. The display adapter is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX-1050.

I have attached a screen capture of the program with the Start Center.

The Start Center is currently not scaled indeed, so it is going to look small on high DPI monitors. It's something we do hope to address.

But don't worry about not being able to find your scores. The Start Center is just a convenience and is not needed at all. Your scores can be opened normally from File / Open, via your OS file browser, etc.

Marc, I followed your github link, but how do I actually implement the change? I don't know how to access the MuseScore script.

That githup links is to a PR, which is merged, so is part of 2.1, which does have a command line Option for this now, see https://musescore.org/en/handbook/command-line-options-0

I'm still lost. Your link to the manual tells me to type "MuseScore.exe [options] [filename]", but it doesn't bother to explain where to actually type this. I opened the windows command prompt, but it doesn't understand the input, and I don't know where exactly to specify my DPI fix in this process. I need some detailed instructions.

Yes, it's the Windows command prompt you need to type command lines into. You also need to tell the command prompt where to find the MuseScore executable, and details of that vary from system to system. First use Windows Explorer to see if the file MuseScore.exe is in C:\Program Files (x86)\MuseScore 2\bin. If so, then type that exact string with quotes around it, followed by the options you wish to try. For example:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\MuseScore 2\bin\MuseScore.exe" -D 200

Mac too allows for this, it works similar to https://musescore.org/en/handbook/revert-factory-settings#instructions-…, just with other Options

For Windows it is described there too:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/revert-factory-settings#instructions-…

I created a how-to with workaround instructions: https://musescore.org/en/node/233416 Verification of the Windows instructions and the addition of Linux instructions would be appreciated.

Nothing happens when I try to run the app. Screenshot of the app in Automator: Am I missing something?

At first glance, I think you need to escape the space in "MuseScore 2": "MuseScore\ 2"

That did the trick. Thanks!

I have the same problem. I have connected my PC (not laptop) to my HDMI big screen tv.
Very small icons in palette.
If I run musescore -x1 from the command prompt, everything works fine...
I assumed that -x1 would not change the icon size but is does.

Regards,

Martin van Es

That -x1 has been know to help people but I'm not sure why. -x1 is supposed to be the default.

My laptop is a windows and has a 3810 x 2810 resolution. I'm not sure what steps to follow to use the "C:\Program Files (x86)\MuseScore 3\bin\MuseScore.exe" -D 200 to fix the issue. I have tried a few times and each time the problem persisted. I'm not sure if I am just typing it in the wrong location, typing it incorrectly, or maybe I have the wrong DPI. I Believe my DPI is 288 but i'm not 100% sure.

The first thing I notice about your path is that it is to where MuseScore puts 32 bit programs

C:\Program Files (x86)\MuseScore 3\bin\MuseScore.exe

Should be C:\Program Files\MuseScore 3\bin\MuseScore3.exe for version 3. Perhaps you changed the wrong shortcut? I do believe that was the beta since it was still 32 bit and the final 3.0 (or its release candidate) was the first 64 bit windows version.

BTW, you should not have changed the reported version. This was first reported back in version 2.1 not 3.anything now it can't be changed back.

I see this when using a 1920x1080 TV as a display.

The EDID spec that the TV sends to the OS typically includes the physical dimensions of the display, and the OS uses this to calculate the DPI of the display. This means the reported DPI with a TV display may be very low (about 34 DPI in my case). So if MuseScore is trying to scale UI elements to an absolute physical measurement, you'll end up with very small icons unless a lower bound (like 72 DPI) is set.

You can override the EDID info at an OS level, making it think that your monitor is physically smaller than it actually is, but that may cause scale issues in other programs.

Indeed TV sets are know to 'missbehave' in that respect.

I had similar problems, only worse, on my Linux system with a 1920x1080 tv as the monitor connected by HDMI interface. With Marc Sabatella's help, I solved it. See https://musescore.org/en/node/308162 .

For future reference - we are seeing a number of cases (such as @Stanley Sokolow's above where setting QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR seems to be the key. On my Windows system, I need it set to 1 for best results. My Linux system doesn't care. Both have displays of about the same resolution and need "-D" as well. But others - especially on Linux - seems to report needing to set that variable to 0 in addition to or instead of using "-D".

On my Linux Mint 18.3 system that I described at https://musescore.org/en/node/308162 , which has a big tv as its monitor through an HDMI interface, both of the settings seem to be necessary. The QT scale factor set to 0 allows the program to open with normal window sizes, whereas without that environment variable, the windows (splash screen, Start Center, working window, etc.) are oversized and extend beyond the physical screen size. The "-D" parameter to MuseScore affects the element sizes within the program, such as the icons and text, but that still requires adjusting preferences within MuseScore for icon size, text font size, default zoom, and palette scale factor. None of this was necessary for MuseScore on my Linux laptop and on my Windows-10 laptop, on which MuseScore 3.4.2 works right "out of the box" without any tweaking of parameters. The culprit seems to be the fact that the display on my desktop Linux system is a tv on HDMI, although all of the other programs that I've used on that system worked fine except Zoom app which also has the overscanning problem. The QT environment variable hasn't helped Zoom app -- it still is oversized beyond the physical display size, so I run Zoom from within the browser instead of using the app.

Guys,
I have the same issue but on a MacOS High Sierra.
I really don't know how to apply your solutions to my system.
Any help?

Forgot to mention that I'm using a TV not a regular Mac screen

Hi,

I just installed Musescore and was having the same problem, I already fixed by using the "-D" command, I'm just adding more info here to help diagnosting it.

It seems that, indepented of the resolution outputted, the UI of Musescore is opening at -D 25 by defaut, check images with tests.

Here is my system:

Windows 10 Intel x64 without integrated graphics
TV as a monitor, the resolution of the TV is 1366 x 768, but I use it at 1920x1080
Video is coming from the HDMI output of the graphics card GTX 1650S
Don't have a second monitor

This issue is not restricted to 3.6 and does not reproduce for the vast majority of users
But using a TV screen certainly is known to have this issue, those are notorious for mis-reporting their resolution.

-D 25 doesn't seem to make much sense, so no wonder it doesn't help
-D 100 does make perfect sense though, this is pretty near any 'normal' non-high DPI screen
Another contributing factor os the disaplay scaling, often an 125% or even 150%, what is your setup there?
And what is the physical screen size, diameter in inch?
Knowing that use Pythagoras to calculate the real DPI setting.