Virtual Display Layout for LED

[Neil Stratton]

Hi all - until now I have been able to use virtual displays within a 1920 x 1080 output constraint to deal with multiple led screens. My way of approcahing this would be to arrange the virtual displays horizontally until I exceed the horizontal pixel constraint of 1920. Then I would add another output. Until now I was able to fit the vertical dimensions within 1080.

I now have a project where I have 9 led drops ranging from 384 x 960 px, to 384 x 1344.

So I can no longer arrange them as 9 virtual displays left to right on  1920 x 1080 outputs.

I could make each led panel a separate virtual display, but I would then have 110 virtual displays. Which would give me great flexibility, but Dataton say that large numbers of virtual displays may degrade performance.

So my question is - how would you approach this?

Looking forward to realising what I have missed.

Thanks

Neil

 

[zackboyd]

Hi Neil -

The whole idea of virtual displays is to ambiguize this process so it can be accomplished however is best for the LED hardware/transport. I would suggest continuing to approach this as 9 virtual displays, then allow the LED provider to determine what is the best physical transport to send that content to the wall. You can carry on programming with the virtual displays, and can adjust if the LED provider needs to change something.

Hope that helps.

[Neil Stratton]

Thanks Zack. This is how I have decided to set up my stage.

I have 3 x 1920 x 1080 outputs and 9 virtual displays.I have arranged the virtual displays in such a way as to give me the outputs as shown.

It makes sense to me. Can anyone confirm if this is the correct way to do this?Thanks in advance.

Neil

[Neil Stratton]

Hi again.So I have hit a brick wall with this.

My led contact wants something that looks like this but I can't imagine how I would do this without creating 110 virtual displays.The image shows 3 led drops on the left mapped to one output on the right.

Can anyone advise how they would do this?

Thanks in advance

 

 

[zackboyd]

I'm honestly blown away by that. 

Is there something strange with the LED product? Seems like they're making it harder on themselves to run the LED data....

Assuming this is typical LED, the thing you have to remember is the LED sending unit looks for rectangle chunks of video. So with that in mind(if I was providing your LED), I would want your '5x2' blocks just like you have them, laid into the far top-left corner. But with the '6x2', I would want to split them in half and have 2 sections of '3x2' or 1 '3x4', which would be the smallest 'rectangle of video' that the LED could occupy.

Same theory for the '7x2' - one chunk of '3x2; and one chunk of '4x2'.

Hope that helps. It sounds like the LED team your working with is a little difficult - I'm not sure what they're using hippo for. Drink caffeine. Stay calm. Best of luck.

 

Z

 

[Neil Stratton]

Thanks Zack - you have really helped me out here. I was kinda stuck! and confused....

The LED team were using Hippo just to show me how they would lay it out. After your helpful suggestions we have arrived at the layout below.

I now have 16 virtual displays, and everything seems to run fine, so I'm in the dark as to what is considered a large amount of virtual displays.

Thanks for your help.I really appreciate it!

Neil

[JEdgerly]

Glad to see you got it worked out. For something like this, I would usually just run 1920x1200 outputs.  One virtual for each 2x5/2x6, arranged on the stage to match their physical arrangement, then neatly stacked with 4 or 5 per raster.  Depends on the LED vendor's wishes.

[Neil Stratton]

I would have done the same but the matrix switcher we are using is limited to 1920 x 1080 inputs so I had to go this way. Thanks for all your help.

Neil