Better experience for in-class and remote viewers in hybrid meeting

[Rohnsman]

We are a camera club who due to Covid is using Zoom so we can have our meetings both in a classroom for those that can attend in person and remotely via Zoom for those that wish to stay at home.  Often a presenter will have a Powerpoint or other laptop-based presentation.  That is fed to a projector for display to the in-classroom audience and the laptop screen is also shared for the Zoom audience.  Only using the single laptop, the Zoom audience gets the better experience, not seeing the menus and controls being used to operate Zoom "behind the scenes."  The classroom audience sees the menus, people popping into the waiting room, and all manner of other disruptions because the laptop feeds all that to the projector.  Short of having a second computer set up as a "participant" that could feed a "clean" image (without the menus and such) to the projector, is there any other way using a single laptop to provide a "cleaner" feed to the projector free of the menus and other disruptions?

[Bort]

I would suggest checking your settings for how your computer is connecting to and displaying images with the projector. It sounds like the image is mirrored, meaning the laptop screen and the projector show the exact same thing. You can likely change this via display settings in Windows or macOS to instead extend the display on the projector, meaning there are essentially 2 screens available for use, the laptop screen and the projected screen. This would allow you to keep all the Zoom windows on the laptop screen, while the presentation is on the projector screen. Lastly, when in the meeting, just share the projector screen and the laptop screen with all the Zoom windows will not be seen by either the in-person or virtual participants. 

Hope that helps and please make sure to mark the solution as accepted if this information is what you needed.

[Rohnsman]

This works, but creates a new issue.  Treating the projector as a "second monitor" and extending the screen leaves the Zoom control on my laptop and thus they don't show to either the classroom audience watching on the projector nor the Zoom audience.  That's good.  But... Now as the presenter, I must watch and run the presentation while watching the projected image as it is no longer on my laptop screen.  Is the only solution to this problem a true second monitor in addition to the projector?

As I work-around I considered feeding the projector from a second PC which could be configured as a "Zoom participant" and thus get the same clean screen as any other participant, thus freeing my laptop screen for Zoom control.  I think this would work, but then involves setting up yet more equipment to do the presentation.

Is there something I've not considered that would work here?