Totally new to vjing and want to accomplish something complicated

[odie]

Let's say I wanted to do a live show consisting of a number of short films and graphics. I want the capability of putting these into a computer and mixing them live. That's not the hard part. I want to be able to out put three SEPERATE video feeds... so let's say one short film on one feed, and two different graphics feeds running out of the other two. I would want these to run to three seperate projectors. I would want to be able to mix all three feeds from the same computer. Now I'm a mac fiend and the show I work for is already on a mac platform, so please talk mac.

anyone have any ideas? software? neccesary external hardware such as mixers? anyone done anything similar?

grazzi

[apu]

three video outputs from one mac/pc??? :confused:

[sleepytom]

umm - in short yes there are a number of diffrent ways to do this....

none of them are easy though and most require a lot of gear

it also depends on what your actually trying to achive and what gear you've allready got so its very hard to suggest anything really iother than to go and talk to your local av hire place and see what they suggest.

[murph]

you just need three macs. You can put some of the same content on each and pick and choose what you want running on each screen at once. That's the best way if you ask me, and you can probably run vga to all the screens for nice high-res output. Or maybe do several long visual mixes of both short films and small clips from your one mac and burn them to dvd, then use three dvd players, maybe six on three basic mixers so you can change the dvds around. That has the disadvantage of not being particularly flexible, though probably cheaper than three macs. You won't get three feeds from a single mixer under $20-50k, and to do three feeds from a single mac will require both a very high end mac with specialty hardware and very expensive software. For the PC I believe derivative's touch system is designed for stuff like this, but again you'll need crazy hardware to make it work, and possibly even three slave machines.

Good Luck.

[odie]

Hey Murph, I know you from mnvibe...
anywho...

We really want to consolodate this down to one mac... and we don't have any problem with spending up to 15 grand on the setup.

Here's the jist of what we do:

we show three sets of short films and have live music sets as well. During the short film sets we'd only be out putting one channel.. .and that would be the films... we'd live mix in some transitions between them, but that's about it.

During the music, we'd want the capability to output three different visuals... one to a middle screen, and the two others to two screens on the side of the stage. All this running to projectors of course.

As far as what equipment do we have now? Just a projector. We've already got a dual 1.42 g4, but we're going to purchase another comp for this mixing purpose because we'll be touring with this comp.

So I would really appreciate people pitching in on what software and hardware this will actually require so I can figure out if what we're talking about here is monetarily ridiculous.

grazzi

[murph]

from mnvibe, eh? Are you one of the cali kids who visits that site for some reason?

what all does that 15k need to include? the two more projectors and screens, or can you spend that just on the input side? (may need about $5k for soft/hardware to use one pc)

I guess I still don't see why it has to be done from one computer, you could get some expensive hardware & software solution, but that'd only do you good for this setup, whereas three computers could be very useful for a variety of applications in the future. How many people are involved in the video performance side? Are you concerned about how much gear you have to travel with? Setup/teardown time? Do you want us to recommend the expensive hardware and software as a way to justify the purchase from the band/touring company, allowing you to have this nice specialty gear for use in the future?

Anyway, even if you really need to use the specialty stuff, I'm not sure on specifics there, wish I could help. I know there's a magazine featuring lots of these solutions this month, our sound guy mentioned it to me, but I don't recall any specifics, as they're all way out of my budget. I'll ask him if he remembers the magazine...

[vjpixylight]

sounds like you really just need an good active matrix to run the vid signals(asumming you have 3 video cards) from the G4 to the matrix which will throw the 3 different feeds up on the screens.

[sleepytom]

if you can handle not being able to mix the three sources but need to be able to route each one to all or any of the projectors then you need a video matrix switch.
you've a couple of options here (assuming some kind of computer source)
ether in composite with scanconverters (bad quality but reasonable priced)
or
you could use vga to rgbs converters and an rgbs matrix (very good quality but expensive and lots of wiring)

for the source I'm not aware of any software on the mac which allows the use of multiple independent vga outputs - perhaps vdmx3 can but i don't use a mac

on the PC you could use VJamm 2 Pro on a machine with a dualhead geforce card and a pci geforce and a cheap pci graphics card - set the output window to be 3072x768 pixels and spread it across the 3 geforces that go out to the projectors and run the VJamm controls on the cheap pci card, you've then got 3 screens each at 1024x768 and the ability to manipulate a bank of 16 avi clips (at resolutions up to 1024x1024) there would be no need for the matrix (as the 3 screens are effectively one big canvas) and you could convert the VGA to RGBS to run to the projectors.

we have used this kind of setup frequently and run installations for months at a time based on this technique

[odie]

sleepytom - thank you very much. that's very helpful.. granted I don't know half the terms you mentioned... but you've given me a great start and now I've got reading to do. Hopefully a similar set up like that is possible with the mac, which i imagine it will be.

Murph - no I'm not trying to cheat and get them to buy a specialty system that I can run off with in the future. We have a specialized show and need a system that can meet its needs. We want in to work from one comp because we travel. We travel to Colorado, LA, New York, all over. The less equipment the better. We already have a shit load of musical equipment to worry about when we travel, so it'd be great to work from one comp as far as the video is concerned... and yes, set up and break down time is an issue, a big one.

if you could remember the name of that magazine, that'd be awesome.

oh, and no I'm not one of the Cali kids that inexplicably visits mnvibe... I used to live in Minnesota for five years, I was in the scene.

[saccade]

it can be done. i've done it. you need a g4 tower with two dual head video cards in it. 3 projectors and 1 interface screen. when i've done this i've programmed my interface in max. http://cycling74.com. i've used jitter. if you'd like me to build a system for you, send me email and i'll provide references.

j