Computer input into WO

[bgarrett]

Hello all,

I have an interesting situation. I have a Dance performance coming up where the choreographer wants to use an effect from Troikatronix's Isadora. Not my choice. I will be captuing a live video camera of the dancers into Isadora then projecting the image on two projectors. The problem is Isadora doesn't have a good way to edge blend. My question is can I take Isadora into WO by a DVI capture card? I suppose I would need two DVI capture cards. One for each display computer. The display computers are also low profile computers. What would the latency be like? The computers I have are also older computers. They are Core 2 duos with 3 ghz of processing.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[jfk]

... live video camera of the dancers into Isadora then projecting the image on two projectors. ... My question is can I take Isadora into WO by a DVI capture card?

 

Yes. However, you might want to evaluate this before committing.

The capture process can alter the quality of motion, progressive signals will look the better.

 

I suppose I would need two DVI capture cards. One for each display computer.

 

If that is how you choose to do it, yes.

With WATCHOUT 5, it might make better sense to use one display computer for both.

How many feeds from the external source? Resolution and refresh rate?

 

The display computers are also low profile computers. What would the latency be like? ...

 

Depends on the source signal type. With a progressive input video signal,

the same source signal type on the same make & model capture card

will perform the same on any platform.   i.e.

a progressive input signal is transferred directly from the capture card to the graphics card

bypassing the main memory / cpu altogether.

interlaced signals will have higher latency as they do travel through the cpu first (to de-interlace).

[bgarrett]

So here is my setup for this now. I am running WO into the DVI input of the projector and Isadora into the other input. I noticed today that after being on the Isadora input of the projector, when I went to switch back to WO I didn't have any video. I had to restart the display computers to get the video to come up on the projector. Do you think the display computers didn't see a signal back from the projector so they went to sleep. Digital video can be that way. Not sure why it would do that but it did.

Thanks,

B

[jfk]

So here is my setup for this now. I am running WO into the DVI input of the projector and Isadora into the other input. I noticed today that after being on the Isadora input of the projector, when I went to switch back to WO I didn't have any video. I had to restart the display computers to get the video to come up on the projector. Do you think the display computers didn't see a signal back from the projector so they went to sleep. Digital video can be that way. Not sure why it would do that but it did.

Thanks,

B

 

They are not going to sleep, they are literally shutting down when they lose valid EDID signal.

They should re-initialze when EDID is restored, but that has its side effects too.

Anytime the EDID signal changes, the graphics card reset. If EDID is completely lost, those outputs shut down.

And that is a bad thing, as outputs can re-order as part of a reset or shutdown.

Consider providing EDID managers on those outputs so that the outputs see a stable constant EDID signal

regardless of what is going on downstream.

[bgarrett]

Thanks. Do you use a specific EDID manager? Right now my cable to the projector is a fiber cable with dvi converters on each end. Will that cause any issues?

Thanks,

Brent

[jfk]

Thanks. Do you use a specific EDID manager?

 

We have good results with Lightware products. Both the DA2DVI-HDCP-Pro when using a local confidence monitor or the EDID Manager V4 without. We like the fact that they have their own power supply (as opposed to drawing power from the graphics card's DVI port, which is typically not such a good idea).

 

 

Right now my cable to the projector is a fiber cable with dvi converters on each end. Will that cause any issues?

Thanks,

Brent

 

some do, some don't, that is determined by the extender.

We have heard some horror stories about lower cost extenders,

specially the HDMI ones that are made for video (YUV) more than computer (RGB) signals.

 

If you are using fiber, Lightware makes an extender with an integrated EDID manager.