Topic: glynor's Great Wall of Video (Read 9407 times)

JimH · « **on:** November 27, 2007, 02:32:07 pm »

glynor,
Any pictures?

glynor · « **Reply #1 on:** November 27, 2007, 02:32:54 pm »

Ack... I should go get some. Hold on a minute or two and I'll walk down there.

glynor · « **Reply #2 on:** November 27, 2007, 04:12:17 pm »

It took more than a minute or two but I have some pictures uploading to Flickr right now. I'll post them in a minute.

I also shot some video of it, but I won't get to post that anywhere until tomorrow.

glynor · « **Reply #3 on:** November 27, 2007, 04:35:23 pm »

Okay.... Here we go! For those who don't know... My company recently (well, this past summer) installed a Video Wall in our lobby. I'm in charge of developing content for it, and in charge of actually managing it (keeping it running, doing updates, etc). Of course, I have MC12 running the show. It's running a bunch of different detached displays (5 currently) with specialized content designed for the system.

Unfortunately, the system has not been issue-free. MC was really our savior in this case, and without it we wouldn't have been able to do much. Right now, we are waiting on the company we purchased the system from to come and replace the entire system with a new one. This one is bad in so many ways that it is hard to even begin to describe. For one, the color on the screens is terribly dim and inconsistent (even within each display -- each one has a blatantly obvious "hot spot" in the middle of the screen). Also, the aspect ratio on the screens are all messed up (they are 16x9 screens running at 1024x768 which is 4x3 -- so unless you use special content like we did, everything is "squished"). And the computer powering it is horribly underpowered!!

But, hopefully we will be getting a new system sometime soon (LCD panels this time and I'm designing the computer). That should solve most of the issues, if and when it happens.

As mentioned before... On the up side, MC has been great!! It's now been running without fail since September. Solid. 24hrs per day, 7 days a week, with always at least 5 zones playing different content (video and image slideshows). Never a crash or reboot needed.

We had to shoot these with natural light (the flash would have reflected terribly) and I didn't take the time to color correct them so they look a bit "pinkish". The wall is actually a nice cream color, so adjust your eyes. Maybe I'll fix them tomorrow and upload new versions... We'll see.

Click to enlarge.

This one shows what the magic behind the show is...

Click to enlarge.

And here is one of me shooting the video I mentioned above...

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Here's the whole set: TJL's Video Wall (Run by MC)

JimH · « **Reply #4 on:** November 27, 2007, 04:42:10 pm »

Holy Cow!!

That's an amazing display. Nice work on it!

And thanks for posting the pictures.

When you get a chance, could you upload a set to pix01.com?

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #5 on:** November 27, 2007, 04:43:28 pm »

Nice =)

glynor · « **Reply #6 on:** November 27, 2007, 04:48:17 pm »

Quote from: JimH on November 27, 2007, 04:42:10 pm

When you get a chance, could you upload a set to pix01.com?

Sure. It'll probably be tomorrow. I'd like to color correct them first.

mlefebvre · « **Reply #7 on:** November 27, 2007, 04:48:33 pm »

Glynor,

If the company changing the system wants to sell this one real cheap, I'd be more than happy to hack a hole in my living room wall for it...

What a nice display! Can't wait to see the new one!

...Michel.

glynor · « **Reply #8 on:** November 27, 2007, 04:52:01 pm »

Quote from: mlefebvre on November 27, 2007, 04:48:33 pm

If the company changing the system wants to sell this one real cheap, I'd be more than happy to hack a hole in my living room wall for it...

Trust me. You don't want these guys anywhere near your house.

It actually wasn't so much the product (most of the problems in the actual hardware were one engineer's fault -- and he was fired). It was that they've consistently lied and delayed over and over and over. The replacement was supposed to be here in mid October... Last I heard, their head of IT (the guy I've been dealing with and the one person who seemed reasonably competent) suddenly "no longer worked there".

Oh well... Hopefully we'll get what we need eventually.

mlefebvre · « **Reply #9 on:** November 27, 2007, 04:56:48 pm »

Quote from: glynor on November 27, 2007, 04:52:01 pm

Trust me. You don't want these guys anywhere near your house.

I believe you! Naw, I just want the display... I'll hook it up myself

(Yeah... Right...)

...Michel.

newsposter · « **Reply #10 on:** November 27, 2007, 05:25:46 pm »

U guys using the Matrox or Sceptre video wall stuff? Their stuff is the 'gold standard' in terms of stability and ease of setup/use but unfortunately overshadowed by the glitzy (read: high profit and high maintenance) stuff that AV houses usually sell.

It's long past the time when walls like this were black magic.

cosmicfx · « **Reply #11 on:** November 28, 2007, 12:16:56 am »

Amazing stuff! Nice pics Glynor.

Just incase Michel is snoozing... I'd like to make second dibs on the display.(I just need a heads up as I'll have to nock a wall out to make space for it)

cosmic

glynor · « **Reply #12 on:** November 28, 2007, 06:12:52 am »

Quote from: newsposter on November 27, 2007, 05:25:46 pm

U guys using the Matrox or Sceptre video wall stuff? Their stuff is the 'gold standard' in terms of stability and ease of setup/use but unfortunately overshadowed by the glitzy (read: high profit and high maintenance) stuff that AV houses usually sell.

It's somewhere in-between. It's based on a Matrox output card, but I think the capture cards (which I'm not using) are custom.

Since it is entirely possible that we will be not getting a new system from this company and instead getting our money back, I'd really be very interested in any advice you could give. I had previously decided that if we get our money back that I was going to try to build something myself (probably buy an off-the-shelf dual-CPU Xeon (Penryn) server box, and then buy my own Matrox cards). I'd be interested in knowing anything more you can tell me, since you obviously know a little bit about it at least (or can at least point me towards some references).

JimH · « **Reply #13 on:** November 28, 2007, 06:39:55 am »

glynor,
We'd be interested in giving you a quote. We have a small group in Phoenix that does custom servers. They're part of JRiver. They just built our TV server for about $2800. Multi-processor, multi-core, 1TB disk, rack mount case with special cooling. A beast. You could save money doing it yourself, but they'll save you time and aggrevation. I think your requirements might fit really well with their skills.

Jim

dcwebman · « **Reply #14 on:** November 28, 2007, 06:48:02 am »

glynor, BTW, nice haircut.

glynor · « **Reply #15 on:** November 28, 2007, 07:27:54 am »

Quote from: JimH on November 28, 2007, 06:39:55 am

We'd be interested in giving you a quote. We have a small group in Phoenix that does custom servers. They're part of JRiver. They just built our TV server for about $2800. Multi-processor, multi-core, 1TB disk, rack mount case with special cooling. A beast. You could save money doing it yourself, but they'll save you time and aggrevation. I think your requirements might fit really well with their skills.

Absolutely Jim. I'm going to discuss this with my boss further today and we'll send you an email.

glynor · « **Reply #16 on:** January 07, 2008, 02:20:05 pm »

So, supposedly the vendor is going to be bringing us our new screens on January 28th (I'm not holding my breath). Hopefully I'll actually be able to kick the wheels on this thing for real, and get some cool stuff done with MC and the video wall!!

Still remains to be seen if they'll be replacing just the displays, or the whole system. We'll see!

benn600 · « **Reply #17 on:** January 07, 2008, 09:48:43 pm »

So you're looking at essentially five displays? That doesn't seem that tough does it? I was running three displays for quite a while with no problems at all. Why not just buy 3 high end 2-port DVI cards and set them up in Windows as 5 monitors? I hear people have trouble with multiple monitors but I have gotten multiple monitors working on several boxes with almost no issues...and like I said, I was running 3 for a while. Oh, now that I think about it I had a 4th going. It was a 21", 2 - 20", and a 27" 720p. And that was with low end graphics cards. My current card cost 6 times as much and can handle hardware decoding of quite a bit.

The displays definitely require some attention to get a nice clean look like you've got.

I used MC for running our last theater show at school and it worked flawlessly. I ran ~10 videos, ~25 videos, and several music tracks...all with specific overlaps and queues. I never had a crash and zones gave me all the power I needed. Then it was left to human error. I didn't have any major mistakes on my part. gappie provided me assistance for hiding the OSD and that sealed the deal. MC ran the show!

glynor · « **Reply #18 on:** January 09, 2008, 08:18:19 am »

Quote from: benn600 on January 07, 2008, 09:48:43 pm

So you're looking at essentially five displays?

Those are 8 separate 42" DLP displays (being replaced by 8 separate 42" LCDs).

Video needs to be able to scale across them all. So, in those pictures.... The center 4 screens are all showing one video (scaled across 4 displays). Try doing that with a standard video card, with HD content, and see what happens to your frame rate -- assuming your card can even pull it off.

benn600 · « **Reply #19 on:** January 09, 2008, 09:36:59 am »

Of course if you prepared the video by splitting it ahead of time into four parts then that changes things.

But ic.

glynor · « **Reply #20 on:** January 09, 2008, 11:33:59 am »

Quote from: benn600 on January 09, 2008, 09:36:59 am

Of course if you prepared the video by splitting it ahead of time into four parts then that changes things.

That's not practical at all when we are re-purposing video designed for other purposes (often with lead-time measured in minutes). Plus, running 4 1080p HD displays without acceleration (because you have to disable acceleration to be able to run video on secondary displays) doesn't work at all -- especially considering that because it is a digital sign, we can't afford even occasional stutters.

Not to mention that the system has component, composite, and s-video INPUTS, which we use to display video "live" from microscopes and cameras and whatnot, and these need to be able to be scaled across multiple displays.

At any one time, the system might have 4 still-image slideshows (perhaps with video mixed in), 2 live feeds (partially overlapped), 1 HD Video (scaled to multiple screens), and some music running in the background. Then, they might come down and say they want the content in one place completely changed and it'll need to be "live" in 15 minutes.

JimH · « **Reply #21 on:** March 11, 2009, 06:47:16 pm »

glynor,
I told a couple of friends about this today. I still think it's an amazing thing you did.

Jim

glynor · « **Reply #22 on:** March 11, 2009, 10:55:04 pm »

Actually... Just last weekend it finally got replaced with the new (and not horribly broken) screens. It is going to be better than ever once I get it set up again. I should be able to actually put new and improved content up there.

Once I get it going and they finish replacing the trim, I'll have to get some pictures.

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Author Topic: glynor's Great Wall of Video (Read 9407 times)