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Creating a video wall with AMD Firepro 9100 and Adobe Premiere
I am going to do my best to lay out my challenges and questions. Please be patient with me.
Goal: I’ve been hired by an animal shelter to create a unique video experience for those that visit the lobby. There will be 4 LCD monitors around the lobby. One on the north wall, one on the east wall, and two on the west wall (Longer wall).
The effect will be that some dogs (That I will have shot in studio) will be sitting on the monitor on the west wall. then will walk OFF CAMERA toward the other monitor, walk through it, than through the north wall monitor, and finally stopping at the monitor on the east wall to eat treats.
That’s the illusion. The dogs can traverse the room by going from one monitor to the next.
I have a 5K camera so I am good there.
To make this look as realistic as possible, I have decided to use 4 – 4k LCD monitors.
Equipment wise I am planning on using the AMD FirePro W9100. They say it can drive 6 – 4k monitors.. I only need 4 but like the idea of being able to add more in the future.
Editing will be on Adobe Premiere
My questions (for now) have to do with delivery and playback.
Am I correct in assuming the best way to handle this is to make a movie in Premiere that is the size of all 4 monitors? 15,360 x 2160?! I can do that as long as there is a codec that can handle that.
I was able to make something this size in Premiere but of course H264 will not support it.. Cineform did. I cannot see this working though, such a large video.
But what about playback? Everytime I try to get a media player to go full screen, it zaps to just one monitor.. Granted I am testing this theory on my old graphics card, and it’s possible the new AMD 9100 allows for this in ways that my current setup will not.
In a PERFECT world I’d prefer a separate movie for each monitor and have them synced in some way. This would also allow me to have control of each monitors AUDIO.. So dogs on one screen could bark at dogs on the other screen.
I fear the 4k idea may need to go away due to the amount of data I am adding to the mix.. I am hopeful people with more experience than i can chime in here.. I know we have a GREAT idea, but I need to have a solid way to implement it.
We do not have a huge budget but any help would be wonderful.
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2 Replies
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Some churches I know have done video wall type things (actually more environmental projection, but same implementation challenges) using Renewed Vision’s Pro Video Player software and Mac Minis. It’s intended for applications where you’re trying to coordinate video playback.
Another thing to look at is Maxtrox’s DualHeadToGo products. This would let one mac mini to see two displays as one dual-width monitor, although I doubt they go to 4K. If you did 1080p, you might be able to do two mac minis each with a DualHeadToGo so each mac controls two displays, and then used Pro Video Player to coordinate the two Mac Minis playing back the video.
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[Jay Kelley] “Am I correct in assuming the best way to handle this is to make a movie in Premiere that is the size of all 4 monitors? 15,360 x 2160?! I can do that as long as there is a codec that can handle that.”
FYI, this is the equivalent of 16 streams of 1080 HD. That’s a lot of pixels.
It’s not so much a question of a codec that can handle it, but a display system that can play it in real time.For a project like this, I’d look to an existing multi-display solution, and the software is just as important as the hardware. I personally use Dataton WATCHOUT, but there are other media servers that would also work nicely.
If you can step this back to HD displays, it is doable today from a single machine with quad output. If you need to do this with four 4K displays and scaling is not an option, you might consider a cluster-based playback solution (again, like WATCHOUT).
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn]
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