TroikaTronix Forum: Isadora: General: 5 screen hardware configuration?


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5 screen hardware configuration?

ryan
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Jul 1, 2007, 6:50 PM

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5 screen hardware configuration?	Can't Post

im attempting to run 4 projectors off one mac computer with 2 live cameras in. i am needing to buy equipment pronto for a media production 'emergence' that will be touring soon.
I have been using 'isadora', and am trying out networking configurations with 5 mac books but am losing packets of osc, and the software for tthis configuration doesnt seem very equipped to deal with complex instructions for the 4 slaves on a LAN.
So i need advice on what may work for a new mac tower. is there an external video card or magic box that one can just hook up, it s only for s.d quality, or can three single slot video cards with dual ports suffice.
As mac towers only suport a 4 pci express, i am unsure of if mac can handle such configurations without crashing because of using small video cards which may not be able to approportion processing. this i think?would put alot of strain on bandwidth.
also, have any of you used firewire capture cards, i need 2 lines in.do they use the video cards to process?

so hopefully some out there might have some experience with these kinds of problems, any coorespondance would be greatly appreciated.
kind regards
ryan

Mark Coniglio
TroikaTronix / Moderator

Jul 2, 2007, 3:35 AM

Post #2 of 5 (843 views)
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Re: [ryan] 5 screen hardware configuration? [In reply to]	Can't Post

Dear Ryan,

Well first, I'm disturbed to hear you are losing packets of OSC. This really shouldn't happen -- even though OSC is transmitted using UDP, on a LAN this should always work. Are you sending lots of data? Is there anything else you can tell me about this bug?

Anyway, regarding your tower questions, I am unfortunately not well equipped to give you an answer. I myself have always done my performances on a powerbook, so I've not investigated multi-card setups. But there are several Isadora users who have, and I'm hoping they'll chime in here.

One thing to consider, in lieu of multiple video cards, is the Matrox Triple Head 2 Go. Connected this to one video card gives you three 1024x768 video outputs. Though, at $200+ perhaps the multiple, dual head, video card solution is simpler.

You will need to remember though that Isadora currently only accepts one video input at a time. if you need two cameras as input, this is going to be an issue on a single machine.

Finally, by "s.d." you mean "standard definition" which means 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL). Even on a desktop machine that is very fast, you are going to have issues playing 5 s.d. video clips at a time, especially if you plan to do any effects. You should consider purchasing the Core Video upgrade, as if you use Core Video to play and render the movies, you effeciency will go up greatly. (See http://www.troikatronix.com/izzy-updates.html for downloads of the latest IsadoraCore version.)

So not the most helpful answer, but hopefully a little bit of information. I'm going to start a new topic on multiple video card configs for towers and try to get some solid answers archived in this forum.

Best Wishes,
Mark

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Mark Coniglio / TroikaTronix
Creator of Isadora

(This post was edited by Mark Coniglio on Jul 2, 2007, 3:37 AM)

ryan
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Jul 2, 2007, 4:03 PM

Post #3 of 5 (828 views)
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Re: [Mark Coniglio] 5 screen hardware configuration? [In reply to]	Can't Post

Thank you for your reply,
In regards to osc transmit and recieve, a signal was recieved although not always in sync, and sometimes not at all. also i had problems of assigning values from the master control to the slave from the control id. Should this be happening? For jump, i made a button in control to toggle with a value from zero to one(on/off),and made register to the multi transit actor, but the values arent been kept on the recieving end, all actors interpret the message instead of the ones assigned with id links. is this an issue of not reading control id links over a network?is there a way through this?
Because I was assigning different tasks to (i,e, jump, freeze) to different IP addresses/port no.'s, using different control ID's, I would think that only the address that was nominated would recieve them. This was using 5 powerbooks with izz 1.2.7.
...anywaysregarding the 5 screens and hardware configuration, will isadora recognize all ports of a video card,say the matrox, and with 'core video' i have only recently bought a usb dongle for izz', can i upgrade or do i have to purchase izz again..our media theatre season starts in4 weeks, so im slightly nervous..
kind regards
ryan

Mark Coniglio
TroikaTronix / Moderator

Jul 3, 2007, 6:23 AM

Post #4 of 5 (816 views)
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Re: [ryan] 5 screen hardware configuration? [In reply to]	Can't Post

Quote

i had problems of assigning values from the master control to the slave from the control id. Should this be happening? For jump, i made a button in control to toggle with a value from zero to one(on/off),and made register to the multi transit actor, but the values arent been kept on the recieving end

I'm sorry - I'm just not following what you're saying here. I think you're saying

1) You used the Ctl ID Link to assign a button to the input of a Toggle Actor
2) You took the toggle actor out to the OSC Multi Transmit Actor
3) The values (1 or 0 from Toggle actor) were not received on the other end

Is that it??

Quote

Will isadora recognize all ports of a video card,say the matrox

Isadora will recognize all of the video cards on your system as long as they would appear as a "screen" to your computer. (Some cards, like the BlackMagic Deck Link don't function as a screen, and you must output to them using the "External Device" functionality found in the output menu.

The Matrox is a different story, because it's 3 screens appear as one giant screen to the computer (e.g., 3072 x 768 = 1024 x 3 x 768.) So you use three Projector actors to output to this super wide screen, but set their widths to 33.333%, and the 'left' input to 0, 33.3333, and 66.6667 respectively. This places the three images on the three separate outputs.

Quote

i have only recently bought a usb dongle for izz', can i upgrade or do i have to purchase izz again [to enable core video]

No -- youi do not need to purchase again. Just purchase the upgrade from the online order page. You just need to know that the Core Video and Audio stuff is in public beta -- several users are using these features happily, but there is the occaisional bug. I'll send you a new code for the USB key that will enable these features. But it may be worth trying them out first -- if you remove the key and run Isadora in demo mode, they will appear in Group #1.

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Mark Coniglio / TroikaTronix
Creator of Isadora

ryan
Novice

Jul 3, 2007, 4:38 PM

Post #5 of 5 (805 views)
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clarifying master to slave [In reply to]	Can't Post

I used the toggle action of a control button i.e,zero as off and the value of one as on within the control id configuation and assign both the trigger and value of the Osc multi transmit actor and the OSC Listener actor on the LAN slave as well as using different control actor with differnt Ctl ID links to the value input of the OSC Multi Transmit actor with extra osc listeners in the same formula.

The problem is that the lilstener doesnt seem to differentiate the Ctl ID's from each other at the recieving end..as well, there was no gurrantee that the packets would reach their destinations everytime..at best i got 3 out of 4 stikes,meaning 4 slaves, just for the jump actor to work,just not efficient enough to run 4screens of of sincronized media by..I also experimented with using the control screen on the slaves and of assigning the media bins within with matchin Ctl ID and values+Init

after ten days of testing I have had to put the LAN project on hold because I must be doing something wrong,but it would be good if it worked.

this is why i'm pushing for a single mac pc setup, though the 5 laptop set-up would possibly be better in terms of spreading the workload to a manageable amount.

kind regards and thank you for creating this great forum , ryan

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