NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

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daddymacgyver
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NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

Post by daddymacgyver »

Hi guys i'm new to Resolume & have been using it for displays on my video walls and its worked great. I am thinking of getting into conferences where I would need to display Microsoft Power Point presentations from a separate machine and possibly a live camera feed or 2 on my video walls. I've just been researching how to do this with Resolume.

My Questions are:
1. Should I be trying to do this using NDI or external capture cards?

2. What are the pros & cons of using NDI or a capture card that is natively supported by Resolume (besides price)?

3. Which one is easier to set up & get working correctly?

4. Which brand of cards and model work best with Resolume (I need at least 1 SDI & 1 HDMI input)?


Thanx in advance guys.

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He2neg
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Re: NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

Post by He2neg »

(1)
To use Resolume as "heart" of the technical System is possible but i dont think its the solid professional way.

The professional way is to use a dedicated presentation switcher / screen management System.
Analog way & barco are the biggest brands i know for this stuff..


Still anwsers to the rest..:

(2) NDI has more delay and is sometimes a bit compressed (bad quality), depends on the quality of your network. (3) I think NDI is a bit more complex to set up correctly becouse its have more settings to care about.

Powerpoint can be via NDI
For live cameras i would suggest a capture Card

(4)
For each signal you will need a 2cnd capture card. There are some switches, wich also work as capture card so you can have 1 input into resolume with multiple sources.
I wont suggest a special brand here there were enough disccusions and test to take a look.
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cosmowe
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Re: NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

Post by cosmowe »

(1)
To use Resolume as "heart" of the technical System is possible but i dont think its the solid professional way.

The professional way is to use a dedicated presentation switcher / screen management System.
Analog way & barco are the biggest brands i know for this stuff..


Still anwsers to the rest..:

(2) NDI has more delay and is sometimes a bit compressed (bad quality), depends on the quality of your network. (3) I think NDI is a bit more complex to set up correctly becouse its have more settings to care about.

Powerpoint can be via NDI
For live cameras i would suggest a capture Card

(4)
For each signal you will need a 2cnd capture card. There are some switches, wich also work as capture card so you can have 1 input into resolume with multiple sources.
I wont suggest a special brand here there were enough disccusions and test to take a look.

I totally quote him and sign He2neg! .....
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daddymacgyver
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Re: NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

Post by daddymacgyver »

Thanks for the info he2neg.

For me I think I would have to use Resolume to be able to scale my output depending on my video wall size and if it is a standard size or not.

I thought there were some capture cards that could receive SDI signals and HDMI at the same time?
or is it just 1 or the other?

I was looking at a Blackmagic ultrastudio mini recorder, would that do what i needed? Is it a good choice?
I run Resolume off of a laptop.

I still have to look into the switches that are also capture cards, i have not got a chance to research those.

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He2neg
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Re: NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

Post by He2neg »

Videowalls (are we talking about LED walls?!) have. Controller were the mapping should take place. Like sending a 4k signal to the controller and set inside the controller were the area of interest is.

The bmd webpresenter does have 2 inputs to switch between. I think the ultrastudio only can use 1 of the inputs at a time.
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daddymacgyver
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Re: NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

Post by daddymacgyver »

He2neg wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2019 15:45 Videowalls (are we talking about LED walls?!) have. Controller were the mapping should take place. Like sending a 4k signal to the controller and set inside the controller were the area of interest is.

The bmd webpresenter does have 2 inputs to switch between. I think the ultrastudio only can use 1 of the inputs at a time.
Yes LED walls
& yes the controller maps the area for the LED configuration. Depending on the amount of panels I use would determine my aspect ratio (resolution). The available display resolutions available on my PC may not match the resolution of the configured led video wall.

Not sure if I'm making sense. I am still new here and the only way I know of to scale my output correctly and precisely is with a software like Resolume.

Ok I'll have to look into the ultrastudio again to make sure. I did see the webpresenter but havent looked into it. I'll check it out tonight.

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He2neg
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Re: NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

Post by He2neg »

daddymacgyver wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2019 16:02

Yes LED walls
& yes the controller maps the area for the LED configuration. Depending on the amount of panels I use would determine my aspect ratio (resolution). The available display resolutions available on my PC may not match the resolution of the configured led video wall.

Not sure if I'm making sense.

For me in the moment it dont make any sense no... normaly you send a standart video signal with a standart resolution to the LED Prozessor.

i.e. your LED Wall is 1920x600px you send a 1920x1080 Signal and the prozessor only take the top 600px of that signal and put it nativ on the panels...
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daddymacgyver
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Re: NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

Post by daddymacgyver »

He2neg wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2019 19:02
daddymacgyver wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2019 16:02

Yes LED walls
& yes the controller maps the area for the LED configuration. Depending on the amount of panels I use would determine my aspect ratio (resolution). The available display resolutions available on my PC may not match the resolution of the configured led video wall.

Not sure if I'm making sense.

For me in the moment it dont make any sense no... normaly you send a standart video signal with a standart resolution to the LED Prozessor.

i.e. your LED Wall is 1920x600px you send a 1920x1080 Signal and the prozessor only take the top 600px of that signal and put it nativ on the panels...
Right and if i want the whole (1920x1080) image to show on the led wall i would now have to scale it using Resolume.

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Re: NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

Post by Empyfree »

Yeah, you can pretty much do what you hope here.

There’s a good post on Facebook recently where somebody is using a touchscreen laptop running Arena as a master “switcher” for a large conference. There’s almost no content loaded in, just lots of different arrangements of capture cards.

Edit: link to the fb post: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5854801 ... 77?sfns=mo

If you’re just capturing Powerpoint from a second computer that you have good control of then NDI will probably work well. You’ll need to make sure you’ve got a well set up gigabit network between your Powerpoint machine and your Arena machine.

For SDI capture the Blackmagic Mini recorders are pretty good. They can capture SDI OR HDMI (not simultaneously) and require a thunderbolt connection. I use these to ingest cameras sometimes.

daddymacgyver
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Re: NDI vs Capture Cards which one to use

Post by daddymacgyver »

Empyfree wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2019 23:06 Yeah, you can pretty much do what you hope here.

There’s a good post on Facebook recently where somebody is using a touchscreen laptop running Arena as a master “switcher” for a large conference. There’s almost no content loaded in, just lots of different arrangements of capture cards.

Edit: link to the fb post: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5854801 ... 77?sfns=mo

If you’re just capturing Powerpoint from a second computer that you have good control of then NDI will probably work well. You’ll need to make sure you’ve got a well set up gigabit network between your Powerpoint machine and your Arena machine.

For SDI capture the Blackmagic Mini recorders are pretty good. They can capture SDI OR HDMI (not simultaneously) and require a thunderbolt connection. I use these to ingest cameras sometimes.
Thank you empyfree. Good link. Yes this is exactly what I was thinking about.

Ok at the NDI recommendation. Thanks.

ok i thought the mini was simultaneous. my mistake.

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