[Philip Haynes]

Todd

I would recommend looking at the Datapath x4(https://www.datapath.co.uk/products/multi-display-products/datapath-x4), which would be ideal, or some Matrox Triple Head To Go.both of which could be hired from a rental house like VER or similar

What you have not mentioned is what will be the resolution, and frame rate of the files to be played and the software to drive this playback, as they will all have a impact of the viability of what you want to achieve, also with all setups like this you should always test, test, and test to be sure that everything will work as expected before going to site. OH and with that many files on the go a SSD would be your only way to get playback to happen.
In truth I would really look at playback from 2 machines as it would provide some redundancy, as what is possible vs what is a sensible show safe system can be 2 different beasts

hope that is of some help

Phil
Philip G Haynes
Live Visual Design and Direction

[Philip Haynes]

Dan

Been using one of these:
https://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/h264prorecorder/

Component in plus analogue audio in(which works well) or SDI/HDSDI in but you will need a way to embed the audio in before the H264 recorder.

Used them on concerts for the artist to review the show, seem to be solid little boxes.

Phil
Philip G Haynes
Live Visual Design and Direction

[Philip Haynes]

really depends on your needs and workflow and how platform agnostic your workflow is.

For me and most of my clients the Mac is the cheap part of the environment, it is the software and the hardware that we use where the real expense resides, and the fact we have a stable and rugged workflow.

Phil
Philip G Haynes
Live Visual Design and Direction

[Philip Haynes]

[Philip Haynes] “The supported output of mini displayport in OSX(which is less than the tech spec) is insufficient compared to that of a dual link DVI output, and as we are entering a huge escalation in the Pixel count wars, so how do you work with the content at its native res in a mac environment?”

Specifics? What do you mean here?

2560 by 1600 is currently the output ceiling of a mac mini displayport/thunderbolt as it stands which is great for most folk. Though there is no clear data on what is going to happen outputting using purely the thunderbolt side of things, and what will be the latency compared to the display port side of things.

Phil
Philip G Haynes
Live Visual Design and Direction

[Philip Haynes]

We are all(users, hardware and software developers) in the same situation if we rely on OSX environment as a backbone for our work. We are standing on the edge of a cliff with the cloud cover upto the edge of the cliff and we don’t know if there are steps down or it is a sheer drop of 1000m. For those working on normal editorial at standard current broadcast standards, this analogy will seem overly dramatic. Though for those of us that have found Lion a step backward which won’t support some of our PCIe cards or has presented no advantage at all, our concerns are very real.

The supported output of mini displayport in OSX(which is less than the tech spec) is insufficient compared to that of a dual link DVI output, and as we are entering a huge escalation in the Pixel count wars, so how do you work with the content at its native res in a mac environment? If apple throw everything into the thunderbolt basket, which at the moment is still vaporware or untested in my work environment.

It very hard now, to know what to do, apart from buy as many mac pros as you can now, and then look at the options with a certain amount of leisure. And yes technically a hackintosh is a option…BUT if you are in time critical situation and anything goes wrong, well you will have to underwrite it as no insurer will cover you.

My circumstances are different to many of you as editing and content creation is only part of my workflow to feed exhibiting and live manipulation via a mac based environment.

Phil
Philip G Haynes
Live Visual Design and Direction