How do I get VLC to play on the second monitor on windows?

It has the option, it's just kind of tucked away a bit. Under Tools -> Preferences go to the Video section and choose your display device in the DirectX settings:

You can use \\DISPLAY2 in a multi-monitor configuration. Ensure you are using DirectX instead of Default as the output (in the Display section above).

Maybe this solution might help...

At our church, we sometimes need to display video content on the second monitor which is our projector screen. We also chose VLC to display the content, and for similar reasons as stated we found it rather distracting on having to drag the 'player' window of VLC on to the second monitor. We also wanted to come up with a really simple solution so that our less computer-savvy operators could find it really easy to show video content.

Using VLC 1.1.4 under Windows Vista, we came up with the following batch script, which we've put into a file (Vlc_Starter.bat) which can be placed anywhere (for example on the Windows desktop):

set vlcPath="C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe"

%vlcPath% %1 --video-x=1600 --video-y=400 --width=300 --height=300 --fullscreen --no-video-title-show --no-embedded-video --no-qt-fs-controller

This enables us to simply drag-and-drop media files onto the Vlc_Starter.bat file icon, which automatically loads and starts the video on the second monitor. We can then control and stop the video playing from the VLC 'controller' window as normal.

If you wanted to use this, you would have to adapt the Vlc_Starter.bat to match the setup of your second monitor - this is the video-x=... and video-y=... option in the script. You might also need to change the vlcPath=... setting for your install location of VLC. You can also adapt the script to display DVD content (replace the %1 to something like dvdsimple://g:\@2 where 'g' is the drive and '2' is the DVD title number), or make the script into a Windows shortcut instead (I won't give details as my posting is already pretty long...!)

I've found a semi-satisfactory way to do it. Make sure you set up the second monitor on the right hand side, then:

• Open the preferences dialog (Tools --> Preferences)
• In the interface tab, choose Native, and un-tick "Embed video in interface" (this enables the controls to be separated from the video)
• Choose "All" in the "Show settings" box at the bottom left of the preferences window
• Choose the video options from the left
• Tick Fullscreen video output
• Scroll down and set an X and Y position that are on the second monitor - so set an X position larger then the width of the first screen. The value of the Y coordinate doesn't matter much, but mustn't be negative otherwise both values will be ignored.
• Save the settings

Now, when you start a video, it will run full screen on the second monitor. The disadvantages of the above compared to the Mac OS "Fullscreen Video device" menu are:

• Sometimes you will see the video window for a moment before it goes full screen.
• It's a pain in the neck to set up, and kind of needs to be set permanently
• You can't have the non-fullscreen video on the first screen to preview/cue it up before you start & if you exit full screen mode you get a video window on the second monitor, which isn't what you want in a presentation type situation.
• It only works with the second output on the right. With it on the left, VLC seems to treat a negative window position as "use defaults". I haven't tried putting the second monitor above or below - presumably only one of those will work.