-
Method for Doing Multi-Screen Video
I am involved with a group attempting to present a multi-screen video presentation. It will pertain to a historic era…roughly speaking, the 50s to the 70s. The plan is to have several (roughly eight or so) vintage televisions showing content related to the era. The viewers will have the opportunity to interact with the presentation.
My first idea was to use Adtec media players configured to respond to external trigger events. Also these media players allow coordination of the screens through a master/slave configuration of the players. However, it seems that the budget will not allow the purchase of the media players.
Is there another way of doing this? It was suggested that the content be fed from computers with multiple video cards. Evidently there is someone on the team with Max/Jitter expertise. Can you imagine a configuration that will work to coordinate video AND respond to external triggers? Thanks in advance.
-
16 Replies
-
As a long-time Dataton WATCHOUT user, I’d suggest you look into that. It’s built for multi-screen applications like yours. It supports both external triggers and multiple displays.
Also worth mentioning — if you’re using vintage televisions, you can stack whole SD frames into a single HD output. You may be able to find a video wall controller that will then let you extract the SD windows from the HD frames.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
There are multiple applications that can sync multiple videos, but the interactive part of your requirement is the main problem. Since you have someone in the team who is good with Max/Jitter, have a look at –
for his –
1. multiscreener software (free)
2. Video Trigger Video (also free)or HC Gilje’s VPT (Video Projection Tool – also free) and its Extensions at –
https://hcgilje.wordpress.com/vpt/extending-vpt/There should be a solution to your problems with one of them.
Good luck!Thomas Leong
-
Thanks Walter,
But isn’t Watchout horrifically expensive? Cost is an important consideration….
If it were not I could supply several Adtec media players for a reasonable price…I have 20 from a business that blew away…They want to own the gear for the project… -
Thanks, Thomas…They do have someone that can do Max/Jitter. I looked at the website and…frankly…it did not make a lot of sense to me. I am a video guy not a programmer. I am fine with programmer until I get to the “hello world” part. (!) I will relay your suggestions at the next meeting…thanks again.
-
Been thinking…what sort of interactivity do you require from your setup?
With multiple videos playing, if from one source device (eg. a pc/mac) which has multiple outputs, then triggering the device to play another video is very likely to affect the other videos which are already playing but which are not triggered to change. Granted, Watchout and Wings Platinum can do this with their Aux Timelines and Mix Groups features respectively, but $price is high.
Simple solution is, per your original idea, to have multiple individual media players each feeding their own monitor/output, and triggering each to change as and when. With this in mind, perhaps look at “mini digital media players” (google is your friend) which have infra-red remote control capabitilties (about US$20+ each), and have someone de-code/over-ride those infra-red signals for each player and build you a sturdy kid-proof push-button control panel for the audience to select what they want to see on which monitor.
I know an electronics engineer (boffin) who may be willing to do this – de-code, design and build – or suggest alternatives. He specializes in one-off solutions for all sorts of audio-visual related work. He is based in London and knows how to build and program PIC and Basic to get relays to work as intended for museums, etc. Contact me offline if you want to contact him.
Thomas
-
[Pat Ford] “But isn’t Watchout horrifically expensive? Cost is an important consideration….”
Interactive multi-screen is a pretty small niche, so the quality tools tend to a bit more expensive.
Now that WATCHOUT 5 supports multiple outputs per display computer, it is not nearly as costly as it used to be.
If you can stuff 8 outputs into a single Mac, you might consider QLab from Figure 53.
You can certainly roll your own solution, either through Thomas’s proposals or with your own Max/Jitter developer, but I think that you’ll quickly soak up the cost of a couple WATCHOUT licenses with development time — not to mention testing!
[Pat Ford] “They want to own the gear for the project.”
Does that make sense for this project? Depending on the duration of the project, a rental may be a lot cheaper or provide better cash flow.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
First, thanks very much indeed for the advice. It is appreciated.
I am in an awkward position because I feel I don’t have the ability to give you complete details of what we are doing. However, let me flesh it out a bit more:
1. The project is for an event which will occur very early next year.The project will be reinstalled at another venue once or twice a year in the future.
2. The video displays (likely vintage TVs) will display media of a certain era.
3. The visitor will interact with the entire display by moving an object. Ideally this interactivity would be reflected on some of the display screens. Thus, it would be similar in operation to a video game.Am I understanding correctly that a strategy using Max/Jitter might present problems because of the interactivity? I thought Max/Jitter was all about interactivity.
Watchout is actually much less than was my understanding…Either I was wrong or the price has decreased. I thought it was around $12k.
As I said, I have limited knowledge in this area…and no knowledge or ability with programming. I have about twenty Adtec Signedje media players; I could sell them to the people putting on the project. However, I sense that they are not comfortable with buying the used media players because of price.
This is an exciting project for me and I want it to move it ahead in the most efficient possible manner. And thanks once more. -
[Pat Ford] “I am in an awkward position because I feel I don’t have the ability to give you complete details of what we are doing.”
I totally understand.
[Pat Ford] “Am I understanding correctly that a strategy using Max/Jitter might present problems because of the interactivity? I thought Max/Jitter was all about interactivity.”
I’m not saying that — I’m just saying that the cost of the time you’ll spend developing and testing an in-house solution may exceed the cost of buying an off-the-shelf product you can use.
[Pat Ford] “Watchout is actually much less than was my understanding…Either I was wrong or the price has decreased. I thought it was around $12k. “
WATCHOUT has grown up a lot in the last couple releases. It does all kinds of cool stuff now that it didn’t used to do, including multiple display support, a 3D environment, and MIDI/serial/DMX-driven interactivity.
Dataton sells WATCHOUT dongles for $2249 USD each. That’s a per-computer software license. You’ll have to buy a computer to run it on, too. You’ll need two display computers with quad-output graphics cards and two licenses to drive them. During programming, you’ll want a third PC and dongle acting as a production PC (controller/programmer), but once you’ve got the show finalized, you can run in cluster mode without a dedicated production PC (meaning you can rent the third dongle).
That does admittedly carry a reasonably steep price tag, but you’ll still need to buy display computers with a Max/Jitter solution, too, so the price difference is not as great as it may seem.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
I suggest you download Watchout and check out if it will do what you require. Without a USB licence plugged in, the program works in its entirety except for networking with Display PCs (and therefore output to fullscreen). MIDI and Serial inputs/outputs work as well in demo mode. If you are using only one physical PC/laptop to do your tests, install Microsoft’s Loopback Adapter to get an application to talk to Watchout via TCP/IP within that one PC. You may need other utilities to get serial or MIDI to work, eg. HW Virtual Serial Port, MIDIYoke.
Just remember that if you want to run in cluster mode, some commands are not available/different versus running with a Production PC (Control) present. Differences are all in the Watchout Manual.
For the interactivity you described, I’m not sure what the input device will output in order to be seen on screen. If it is a motion sensor, the device must still output some sort of a signal that Watchout can react to – MIDI, serial or DMX. Once Watchout ‘sees’ the signal, it can be programmed to trigger an Auxilliary Timeline that outputs the required reaction to the Stage (Display PCs).
If you want to check out a programmable motion detector that outputs serial, a suggestion is https://www.weiglworks.com/md. I have another from another manufacturer, but mine is hard-coded at factory with the ‘play’ codes of the application I intended it for, unlike Weiglworks’ which is programmable by user.
Another program to check out for interactivity is vvvv.org but the learning curve is far higher than Dataton’s Watchout (for me, anyway).
Thomas
-
Have you looked at BrightSign? They have cost efficient players that can be synced and respond to external triggers.
Cliff Steinberg
Rent Com, Inc.
http://www.rentcom.com
Chicago
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up