Resolume Forum

Good day everyone,

I need some advice/help/opinion on building a pc (or mac pro) tower for AV events using resolume arena 4....
the idea:
(4) VGA capture cards for inputs for various pc's or macs for live inputs
(2+) SDI/HDMI capture cards for live camera feeds (black magic seems to be the better choice???)
(6) Display outs... I've read links to club3d http://www.club-3d.com/index.php/produc ... b-1-3.html that would seem to allow multiple out (i.e.. screens, monitors)

Is this even possible?
What am i leaving out (i.e. motherboard, processor, capture/dislpay cards, cooling)

I appreciate any and all comments good or bad. Cheers!

Yeah it's doable. Use a Decklink Duo or Quad for the Cameras and Datapath VisionSD4+1S Capture Card for the laptops. You want to capture Displayport/DVI/HDMI off the laptops and not VGA.

Motherboard = ASUS or Gigabyte
CPU = Intel i7
Ram = 8 gb (Resolume is a 32 bit application so there's no point in adding more ram).
GPU = Nvidia GTX 780
SSD = Samsung 840pro

If you would like I can (for a small fee) put together a full spec / budget for your system. I've built a rig for a touring artist with a Decklink Quad before, works great, machine kills. PM me if you're interested.

My setup is on the cheaper side, mostly because I don't have a lot of money! But I can tell you it works.

I use a single capture card with an Image Pro HD input into it. One nice thing for mulit camera setups is that you can use a single switching source and preview your sources before you even send it to resolume. You can also have other VJs plug in as well.


Antec Case
ASUS M5A97 PRO mobo
Windows 7
AMD FX 8350 w/ Corsair watercooler
16gig Dual Channel Ram
AMD Radeon HD 7870 Eyefinity 6 Edition 2GB GDDR5
Black Magic Intensity Pro Capture card
Folsom Image Pro Switcher
Extron Cat5 201Tx Rx (for sends)

With this configuration I can mix three full HD layers and input digital or analog signals at 60fps up to five destinations and one for control

A few Notes from My experience..

I have found in the professional AV market, clients don't want to wait for their videos to render to DXV, if you are live you can't render on the same machine while your live unless you want a crash... also the More Live inputs the slower the Frame rate.... Correct me if I am Wrong but the Mac Pro a only has a 5770 video card and that's a pretty weak .... Maybe two hd layers if your are lucky..thats all I can get with a PC and a 5770...

There is Plenty of info here on the forums on hardware setup's ... a little research and I am sure you won't be disappointed..

While it's true that the Macs are not the most powerful machines, since I have a HD5770 in my office MacPro, i thought I'd do an AB test.

With PJpeg and AIC, I can get two layers 1080p at around 35-40 fps, 3rd layer brings it down to 15-20 fps.
With DXV, I can get 5 layers of 1080p at 30 fps, 6th layer brings it down to 25fps.

We usually carry a small laptop with us to do rendering on.

deadsound wrote:if you are live you can't render on the same machine while your live unless you want a crash....

lies....I render/convert while live all the time...

mind you, I'm running some pretty ridiculous systems;

hex core i7 @ 3.8ghz
2x gtx 780 in SLI
32gb ram (going to upgrade to 64....after effects likes ram)
1tb SSD (media/render drive)
1tb Hdd (system/program drive)
HD/SDI Input card

I can easily run 7 hd outputs out of resolume + control monitor @ 50-60fps while converting content in AE without having issues or crashes....if I'm trying to render out an extensive AE project while running that kind of output content, the render goes REALLY slow, but realistically I'll never need to do that live. If I do, I'm really unprepared for a show....

Basically the better the system you put together, the better performance you're going to get, although the higher up you get the more expensive it is to get to the next level.