Suggest Hardware Configuration !!!

[miltonchapman]

HI
I am planning to buy a new hardware for following requirement -
1) I want to connect 6 projectors on ONE PC
2) All these 6 projectors will output SINGLE extended VIDEO.
3) Edge blending is the primary requirement

I have finalised following configuration but want to know whether it will fulfill the above requirements -

> i7 processor , with 12 GB RAM , 250 GB HDD
> CONFUSED BETWEEN - TWO nVidia NVS 510 (4 output) and TWO AMD W600 (6 output) as both have some edge blending technology.
> Resolume Arena to play the files
> CONFUSED BETWEEN - Edge Blending software by PixelWix and Scalable Display or Vioso. These all are very expensive softwares but PixelWix seems to be in my budget. Or as I read somewhere people have even used Resolume Arena for edge blending so it could be I may not require such expensive edge blending software.

Any suggestions on following would be highly appreciated -
1) Which Graphic card to choose ?
2) Which Edge blending software to choose ? or RESOLUME IS JUST BEST for it ...

Milton

[He2neg]

I Know Vioso (Av Stumpfle) am i right you talk about this ?!

Wings is a Timlinebased Mediaserver for whole Shows ( gala events and stuff) so if you dont want to use the whole Av Wings Stuff then you dont need Vioso.

I think all the Softedge / Mapping could be done in Arena...


Grafikcard topic :
It seems that Nvidia is the recommended Brand to work without problems on Resolume. A lot Problems were noticed / disscussed in the Forum with AMD cards.


So Far GL

[miltonchapman]

Thanks He2neg for your much appreciated to the point reply.

AMD is now out of my list

Yes, I am talking about vioso wings , they have edge blending and stacking capability software with auto camera calibration.

[He2neg]

Yes its a nice piece of software.... but also very expensive
as well the "automapping with live Cam" do not work if you want to have several small parts its only for 1 big Projektion

[miltonchapman]

So , I believe I can accomplish following -

I have to project on two walls (left and right) for that I will use ONE PC with 2 nVidia NVS 510 graphic cards. Each card has 4 mini output ports. So I will connect 3 projectors on "Card 1" to project on Left wall and 3 Projectors on "Card 2" to project on Right wall.

Using Resolume I will assign VIDEO A to both the cards where Left Wall will project same extended VIDEO A and Right wall will also project same extended VIDEO A. Using Resolume I will overcome my edge blending issue too.

Am I correct in judging this ? Please correct if I am wrong .

[Joris]

Keep in mind that using the same video for the left and right wall, will cause problems when edge blending.

It's hard to explain why when you've never used Resolume's edge blending, but Resolume defines the blend by overlapping input slices. You can see the process in this video:

phpBB [video]

So when you want to project the same image on both walls, you will have to slice the same area twice. At this point Resolume will think your projectors are completely overlapping. This will make the blend act very strange.

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to tell Resolume *not* to blend two particular slices when they overlap.

The only workaround is to make your comp twice as high, and use a slide effect to duplicate your video. Then you can assign slices for each wall, without them overlapping completely.

[miltonchapman]

WOW !!! Awesome tutorial. Thanks for sharing video and suggestion.

[He2neg]

or the easy way if ( normaly not working)

Walls 100% the Same
Projektor positions 100% the Same

Then you can just use 3 Spliters 1 -> 2 for each Output =)

But as said normaly this dont work so easy....

[miltonchapman]

Hmmm thats also a good option .. Will try to do that as well.

[Oaktown]

I'd like to add a few things to the tutorial.

I blend projectors all the time and for me the most important part of the blending process is the size of the final output.

In the video they use three projectors at 800x600 and create a composition that is 2400x600 so they end up not using some of the right and left areas of the composition. What I would do different is calculate the pixels I need in my composition based on the size of the screen/surface I'm using.

So for instance, if the surface is 20ft x 6 ft and I have three 800x600 projectors, I would create a composition that is 2000x600 knowing that I will get a 200 pixel overlap on both sides. That way my composition will fit the screen exactly and I don't have to leave anything out.

You can derive the pixel overlap by subtracting the size of composition from the total pixel width of my projectors divided by the number of blends so in this case, total pixels= 800x3 => total pixels= 2400, composition=2000, number of blend areas=number of projectors-1 => blends=3-1 => blends =2 so blend width=(2400-2000)/2 => blend width=200.

In that case your first slice would be positioned at 0,0 on the input selection, your second one at 600,200 and your third one at 1200,0.

You can derive the position of the center projector by subtracting half of the slice width from the center of the composition. In this case composition center is 1000, slice is 800 wide so half is 400 so the left side of the slice will be positioned at X=1000-400 => X=600

Another thing to keep in mind when you have to blend projectors is that it's not a perfect world out there so you probably won't get a table where you can line up your projectors perfectly. Most of my blends are done on drastic projection angles to minimize shadows and quite often I cross projectors so the Perspective mode doesn't alway work best.