Joel Hufford
Forum Replies Created
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Hello Ken,
About a year ago I was involved in a project that involved exactly the setup you described, and the PlaybackPro system worked flawlessly.
Ok, well, I suppose I shouldn’t say flawlessly. There was some todo about getting all of the machines we were running to correctly sync over their LAN using the SimpleSync application provided by DTVideoLabs. The difficulty was with the setup of the NTP Server on the controlling machine. However, a quick phone call to DTVideoLabs support quickly helped us to get everything working and there is now a link on their downloads page to an NTPd configuration file for setting up SimpleSync machines.
We had 6 machines running on the network plus the SimpleSync controller machine (a mac mini) 4 of the machines were running stereo video plus backups and the other two were running supporting media on two outboard screens. The stereo video feeds were run to 2 18K LCD projectors hung as a stack, and used some custom built frames to position the polarized filters in front of the projectors. I was not involved in producing any of the content, so I can’t speak to any of the challenges they dealt with in that regard, but for playing back I found the Playback Pro system to be very easy to setup and reliable to work with.
Hope that helps!
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
I’ll second what Chris said.
If you’re at all comfortable with using the Terminal and the command line, I don’t think you can beat rsync.
I’ve been using rsync, paired with SSH to perform nightly incremental backups to a secured offsite server for several months now. It’s fairly simple to implement after reading a few manual pages in the Terminal.
It certainly doesn’t have the polish of an expensive GUI based backup system, but I think that’s one of the things I like about it. It operates at such a basic filesystem level that you don’t have to worry about complicated preference settings or a big application that eats up system resources and slows down your machine.
paired with the “cron” command, you can setup your mac to automatically perform these backups as often as you like, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
also, it’s possible to have rsync create a log about every backup it makes, this way you can check the next day to ensure all of your files were copied correctly.
a quick google search will return a ton of information about rsync. You can also learn a lot by reading the manual page in the terminal. just type “man rsync” in any terminal window.
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
Hi Daniel,
Have you looked at the BrightSign HD210? It sounds like it may be a possible solution for you.You can check it out here:
While they only accept MPEG-2 TS video, these modules are self-contained and can be networked together to maintain synchronization.
I would not attempt to run seven HD streams off of a single computer. That’s asking for trouble.
Someone here can correct me, but I don’t think any more than 3 streams per machine is a good idea, and 3 is pushing it.
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
Hi Paul,
You can get a lot of interesting information about ProRes by reading Apple’s White Paper here:
Apple Pro Res Codec White Paper
As I understand it, the difference between the standard and high quality settings for ProRes specifically deals with the data rate used during compression.
At the bottom of that white paper is a chart showing the target data rate at specific resolutions for each of the codecs in the ProRes family.
for example, a 720x480p30 video encoded with the (HQ) setting will use approximately 63 Mb/s, using the standard ProRes setting results in approximately 42 Mb/s.
a 1920x1080p30 video encoded (HQ) will use approximately 220 Mb/s and approximately 147 Mb/s using the standard ProRes codec.
When delivering in a standard def format, using the regular ProRes codec should always be sufficient.
hope that helps!
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
Have you looked at the Folsom (now Barco) ScreenShaper? as long as you don’t need a resolution above sxga (1280×1024) this may be a viable solution for you.
have a look here:
ScreenShaper 100and good luck!
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
The best way to send the same signal to multiple monitors is to use a Distribution Amplifier, not the TripleHead2Go.
As far as syncing multiple video streams, I’m a big believer in Playback Pro Plus from DTVideoLabs. Others will have different suggestions I’m sure, but I’ve always found PBP+ to be easy to use and reliable.
check out dtvideolabs.com or search through this forum for Playback Pro Plus or SimpleSync.
Good Luck!
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
Hi Craig,
I’ve never worked with QLab, so maybe this is a biased opinion, but I still say playback pro is the easiest solution for live video playback. If this is something you’re going to be doing frequently (which it sounds like it is) then I think it’s easily worth the price of the software.
Included in the software suite is a little utility for syncing multiple machine rolls called SimpleSync. It requires networking the machines together using a router or switch and a separate machine to act as the controller. In my opinion, if you’re only rolling a back up, I don’t see the need for frame accurate syncing. If anything, you’d want to have a few seconds between the primary and backup, as if something were to happen, it would take a few seconds to switch to the backup anyhow.
Again, strange that an “A/V” company wouldn’t have a suggestion for tapeless playback.
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
Another thing to consider is available space in your room. Rear projecting onto a 9′ x 12′ screen with a 1.2 fixed lens will require almost 14.5 feet of throw distance. That’s 14.5 feet of space you can’t put audience seating in.
When space is tight, using a front projection setup can make a huge difference.
Hope that helps
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
Have you looked at Baluns as an option? These devices allow you to send VGA signal over Cat5 cable. The distance you can send the signal depends on the specific device.
Here is a link to two options offered by Gefen. I’m sure others on the forum could offer up some other brands they’ve had success with.
https://www.gefen.com/kvm/dproduct.jsp?prod_id=1463
https://www.gefen.com/kvm/dproduct.jsp?prod_id=4721
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com -
For an AV company to not even have a suggestion as to an appropriate file based playback solution is definitely strange.
Either way, I’m sure that PBP will fit the bill for your event very nicely.
Good Luck!
joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com