Multiple Screens & Multi-channel Audio Installation at DVinfo.net

Chris Hocking · March 3rd, 2008, 01:44 AM

Hi Everyone,

A friend of mine is looking into putting together an audiovisual exhibition.

The exhibition will take place in a square room. On each of the four walls will be a video projection screen. All the screens will be showing different content, but in sync.

The sound system will effectively be 8.1, with two stereo channels for each screen plus a global sub-woofer.

This is a student project - so it doesn't have a huge budget.

The question is, what is the best method to run/control this exhibition?

In the past I've used hard drive-based video players all timecode locked together. I've also used DVD Players in the past, however there simply isn't the money for that, so the plan is to use computers instead (Macs).

How is this best achieved? With a single computer (with something like a Matrox TripleHead2Go) or four separate machines networked together? What software is available that lets you sync all the video and audio channels together?

I know of this package:

http://www.syncmaker.com/

...but it's only for PC. Does anyone know of an Mac equivalent? (Funnily enough, it'll be easier for the student to get his hands on Mac than it will be PCs!).

Any information you can provide me would be very much appreciated!

Thanks!

Chris!

Joshua Boliver · March 19th, 2008, 08:02 AM

Found your post while searching for information about a similar project I am working on. I believe a single computer-based solution is best for this kind of work. But the computer will have to be fast. ie. Dual 2 GHz G5 with 2 GB RAM and some fast video cards with on-board processing. The video frame rate you can achieve will be directly proportional to these factors. Could be done with slower computer, single display card w Triple Head etc. but you will be sacrificing frame rate.

The Holy Grail for this type of installation would be Max/MSP + Jitter. http://www.cycling74.com/products/maxmsp . It is NOT an easy piece of software to learn but maybe someone at your friends school (music departments often work with it) could help with the writing of the patch. I have a friend in Germany who flies over to do programming for me.

For my project, I have been testing and very closely considering using Isadora. http://www.troikatronix.com/isadora.html . Much more intuitive and simpler to get started on (and cheaper). I have been having a hard time getting my multichannel quicktime movies distributed to the proper speaker channels. I am working on figuring that out. But it is very cool to be laying out movies in Final Cut Pro that contain all the video and audio information that would be in my project!

Hope this help Chris. Good Luck.

March 3rd, 2008, 01:44 AM	#1
Chris Hocking Major Player Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 595	Multiple Screens & Multi-channel Audio Installation Hi Everyone, A friend of mine is looking into putting together an audiovisual exhibition. The exhibition will take place in a square room. On each of the four walls will be a video projection screen. All the screens will be showing different content, but in sync. The sound system will effectively be 8.1, with two stereo channels for each screen plus a global sub-woofer. This is a student project - so it doesn't have a huge budget. The question is, what is the best method to run/control this exhibition? In the past I've used hard drive-based video players all timecode locked together. I've also used DVD Players in the past, however there simply isn't the money for that, so the plan is to use computers instead (Macs). How is this best achieved? With a single computer (with something like a Matrox TripleHead2Go) or four separate machines networked together? What software is available that lets you sync all the video and audio channels together? I know of this package: http://www.syncmaker.com/ ...but it's only for PC. Does anyone know of an Mac equivalent? (Funnily enough, it'll be easier for the student to get his hands on Mac than it will be PCs!). Any information you can provide me would be very much appreciated! Thanks! Chris!

March 19th, 2008, 08:02 AM	#2
Joshua Boliver Tourist Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Florence, MA USA Posts: 1	Multiple Screens & Multi-channel Audio Installation Found your post while searching for information about a similar project I am working on. I believe a single computer-based solution is best for this kind of work. But the computer will have to be fast. ie. Dual 2 GHz G5 with 2 GB RAM and some fast video cards with on-board processing. The video frame rate you can achieve will be directly proportional to these factors. Could be done with slower computer, single display card w Triple Head etc. but you will be sacrificing frame rate. The Holy Grail for this type of installation would be Max/MSP + Jitter. http://www.cycling74.com/products/maxmsp . It is NOT an easy piece of software to learn but maybe someone at your friends school (music departments often work with it) could help with the writing of the patch. I have a friend in Germany who flies over to do programming for me. For my project, I have been testing and very closely considering using Isadora. http://www.troikatronix.com/isadora.html . Much more intuitive and simpler to get started on (and cheaper). I have been having a hard time getting my multichannel quicktime movies distributed to the proper speaker channels. I am working on figuring that out. But it is very cool to be laying out movies in Final Cut Pro that contain all the video and audio information that would be in my project! Hope this help Chris. Good Luck.