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Drivers & Software

tonywoode
Journeyman III

Profiles with Scripting support in Radeon Software

Hey all. I really need some advanced advice for what to do about upgrading because until now I've used profile switching and scripting to use my GFX card for different uses (it was an HD 7870 I've stuck to all this time, because it could use the old Catalyst Control Centre functionalities to switch between these different uses I have for my pc (the card has just blown up :-0 ):
1) Gaming Mode - PC via DisplayPort to a 4k monitor with audio coming out of speaker output or headphone output
2) Browsing PC Mode - same as above but with audio coming out of the 4k monitor not speakers/headphones (so I don't have to turn an amp on to browse the internet)
3) TV Mode - video and audio coming out of a 1080 TV via HDMI with Audio, and NOT coming out of the DisplayPort monitor as well
4) Film Mode - as above but with audio coming out of speakers
5) Family-all-in-room - like TV mode, but with the DisplayPort monitor active also (other-people-are-watching-tv-whilst-I-browse-or-work-mode)
6) Retro Gaming PC Mode - like TV mode, but with a script being launched when i switch to the tv that does, well, a LOT of things, for setting up a retro gaming couch experience!!!

(surely I'm not alone here guys, it feels like such an empty world when I look at the Radeon Software Options and they're just about swapping between Game Colour Profiles in Games that AMD find on your PC for you. Even if you have no solution, just let me know you sympathise won't you!!!!):

So until now this has stayed working using the old Catalyst Control Centre functionality to switch profiles and associate launching an executable with a profile, and having the switching available via hotkeys as well, so I could hit ctrl+f1 to go to gaming pc, ctrl+f2 to got to browsing pc and so on.

(In order to switch the audio sources, I never found anything in AMDs software that would help me, so I would launch scripts using Nirsoft's nircmd (see: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/56892-sound-shortcuts-create.html) (which has always been annoying because I really need to spell out the unique ID's of each Monitor and so on to achieve this. But its the only thing that would ever work). Some other workaround were needed for scripting, for instance some actions needed to get out of a UAC prompt, so I had to hack some of the scripted actions via scheduled tasks). The scripting side of it gets complex, but all it needs on AMD's side is the ability to launch an executable when launching a profile, which CCC used to offer as standard, and there was no reason to think we'd end up in this new world where the very idea of doing that seems to be a deviant thing....

What happend next, as some of you know, is that things started to become difficult when AMD started to retire the Catalyst Control Centre, they began a crucade against these functionalities, not seeming to offer any alternatives at all. First the ability to switch profiles via hotkeys was removed, but a workaround was found: https://community.amd.com/thread/191960#comment-2690388, but slowly the ability to associate executable files to run with profiles got hidden further and pushed back, as AMD lost more and more of the CCC UI, so you had to alter the profile xmls.  AMD's last attempt to hide the profile abilities was in June 17, when I found the last workaround: the old CCC UI was still used for Eyefinity, and there's was a hack if you went into 'advanced setup', and tick the pin for 'show in desktop context menu', you could then right click on the desktop and the advanced menu would open with the old Presets (which used to live in named xml files at {myhomedir}\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles

But I assume that was the last time any of this was possible. After the Crimson Edition 17.7.2, Radeon Addition Settings was retired (https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh-004) and so I presume the profiles, and any UI element that can access them, are gone too?

And now we have Radeon Software, i've read the manual for that, but I need someone who has used it and understands what I'm trying to do, to help me. So, if I want to get a new GFX card now, how can I approach or get anything like the profile switching/audio switching/executable launching i've been able to do until now? Surely some of you need these different uses for your home PC too, right?

Thanks in advance

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tonywoode
Journeyman III

I installed Radeon Software after getting no replies, it sure ain't gonna do what I used to do...

So I'm going to answer my own question in case it helps someone: If you're just switching desktop profiles ie: switching monitors on or off, or extending monitors etc, that's not AMD's responsibility, its Windows. So I found some programs that can do this. Now, we want the simplest program, many of these programs don't switch the audio, but if we find a program that's command-line callable, we can make a batch script with three things, and get my use cases above:

1) the monitor profile using the program

2) the nirsoft nircmd.exe call for audio

3) any other associated actions in any other batch file

We can then use the fix for CCC Keyboard Shortcuts I showed above to make keyboard shortcuts to those. So, a couple of easy programs that can save and then load monitor profiles over the command line:

Monitor Profile Switcher download | SourceForge.net

GitHub - falahati/HeliosDisplayManagement: An open source display profile management program for Win...

I don't favour the more bloated alternatives, of which there seem to be many, I want to turn monitors and sound on and off really, so for instance even though this does the audio too, i'd rather have some batch scripts:

Precise Monitor Controls • Features • DisplayFusion by Binary Fortress Software

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