MOOV Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 Hi, Does any one have expirience with hi res h264 movies or animation? I already tried to test setup with four 1080p projectors with one seamless panorama. I need to use in my composition some high resoution video playback. for example 5500x1080 px or even 6834x1080px I would like to play that files with one machine with four outputs, I need playback to be perfectly synchronized. Right now it is very choppy and im wodering if it is becouse unoptimal encoding or it too much for my machine. The file plays fine on one screen without blending or scaling. our machine: i7 / X990@3,47GHz SSD ATI RADEON HD6900 moov.pl 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator jfk Posted January 10, 2014 Moderator Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 ... The file plays fine on one screen without blending or scaling. ... Could you clarify that? i.e. it plays fine in WATCHOUT on one screen without blending or scaling or in a media player? (media players use hardware accelerated movie decoding, watchout uses software decoding, so that is an apples to oranges comparison.) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MOOV Posted January 10, 2014 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 Ok... I meant it worked ok in watchout with just one display output. Problem arose when we connected additional projectors and blended them together. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonas Dannert Posted January 10, 2014 Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 Piotr, I think you need to pre-split your content into as many pieces as you have outputs. In this way you will run four simultaneous threads of video, instead of one Then put them in a composition for convenience. /jonas 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MOOV Posted January 10, 2014 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2014 THX Jonas, Yes that we always do like that, but the question is where is maximum for now. When we split files, it Not always synchronised. Maybe synch with genlock/fremelock FirePro card can help? What do You think? Anyway Im wondering does anybody have any expirience with realy wide video files, and can give us some tips PM moov.pl 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vollmers Posted January 11, 2014 Report Share Posted January 11, 2014 This is exactly how we use it, and with almost the same aspect. Depending on your setup, it should work without problems. What you should consider, is the video format you are using, end especially how long/large the footage files are. In the manual it's pretty well defined what codecs works the best. What I sometimes do, is using VLC for transcoding. It's freeware, and works great. What you can accomplish is getting the specific aspect you want, in the codec you need. If I, for example, design a loop in After Effects, I can post render all the aspects I want, but not all the codecs I want. So normally I render it out from AE in QuickTime animation, to keep the quality, and then I transcode it with VLC. Please feel free to contact me, if you want any further help. Best regards Christian 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonas Dannert Posted January 11, 2014 Report Share Posted January 11, 2014 THX Jonas, Yes that we always do like that, but the question is where is maximum for now. We have not set any maximum size here, it's as much a hardware capacity issue as a software question. 1 fill will normally equal When we split files, it Not always synchronised. At what bit-rate and which codec type are these files encoded? This normally works very well, especially since smaller files normally yields less bitrate than one bigger file at the same quality settings. But the hardware at hand, is of course important, too. i7 / X990@3,47GHz SSD ATI RADEON HD6900 Your machine is not bad in any way, and 6-core is always preferred, but a newer X79-based system is quite a bit faster. Adjusting content specs to the hardware at hand is crucial when trying to set up a stable system. If it's not working well for you, send us a show (with the content in question), to us for a test. File it at support@dataton.com Maybe synch with genlock/fremelock FirePro card can help? What do You think? It might help, but I think there might be other issues at play here, in your case. There are many things that can affect playback performance and sync, one can not simply "throw hardware" at the problem. Normally, for projection, this works well. If we talk about LED-walls, it's a bit different. Then a hardware frame-locking solution would help more. Anyway Im wondering does anybody have any expirience with realy wide video files, and can give us some tips PM moov.pl 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fredrik Svahnberg Posted January 11, 2014 Report Share Posted January 11, 2014 Hi Piotr! If you say the video plays well on a single screen and if the choppiness you see is sync glitches between the different screens/projectors I think putting in a FirePro + the s400 sync module in you Display computes is a good idea. The professional graphic cards from AMD (FirePro) and Nvidia (Quadrosync) does provide frame-locked sync in WATCHOUT. They do however not stop you from overload your computer with too many or too heavy movies. Your have to determine what the source of your problem is. As Jonas told you. If you are not certain, it is always a good idea to check with us first. Please sned your show file+media to support@dataton.se for test. Best regards, Fredrik S 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gar Benedick Posted March 2, 2014 Report Share Posted March 2, 2014 For what it is worth, Steve Farris from Sound Images in Portland put SSDs in his machines and said it eliminated this issue. Again, depending on how large and long your files are. The SSDs do make a big difference! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonas Dannert Posted March 3, 2014 Report Share Posted March 3, 2014 To use SSD:s is the only recommendation from us since the WATCHOUT 5 launch. /jonas 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Fahl Posted March 4, 2014 Report Share Posted March 4, 2014 Videos of up to 4096 pixels in width may play without pre-splitting (assuming adequate hardware, of course). Beyond that, you must pre-split due to hardware (graphics card) limitations. Hence if you're using four outputs from a single computer, you may be able to avoid presplitting by playing a single, wide video (again, asuming adequate hardware and depending on encoding format). Pre-splitting may still offer a performance benefit, though (especiellay on computers with lots of CPU cores). Mike 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
screenshaper Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 Up to 4096 in width. And height? Up to 2160 or more? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator jfk Posted March 8, 2014 Moderator Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 Videos of up to 4096 pixels in width may play without pre-splitting (assuming adequate hardware, of course). Beyond that, you must pre-split due to hardware (graphics card) limitations. ... Is the gpu capability actually hard a limit on any movie resolution, or is it a recomendation on sizing pre-split movies? Up to 4096 in width. And height? Up to 2160 or more? In any case, if the 4096 is a graphics card limitation, it might make sense to examine the specs of the graphics card you are using, since it appears that is the source of the resolution limitation. i.e. YMMV For example, with a four output AMD FirePro W7000 graphics card .... AMD FirePro™ W7000 Graphics> ... Memory Size/Type: 4GB GDDR5 Interface: 256-bit Bandwidth: 154GB Compute Performance 2.4 TFLOPs single precision and 152 GFLOPs double precision floating point performanceDisplay Outputs DisplayPort: Four standard Max DisplayPort 1.2 Resolution: 4096x2160 Max DisplayPort 1.1 Resolution: 2560x1600 ... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Fahl Posted March 8, 2014 Report Share Posted March 8, 2014 I've played 4k H.264 content in WATCHOUT with very good results. The aspect ratio doesn't really matter, as long as you stay withing 4096 pixels in both directions and your hardware is capable of decoding the video. I.e., 7680x1080 should work as well as 3840x2160 (same number of pixels). Mike 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
screenshaper Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 I have put my limit to 4K standard 4096 x 2160. Never had problems whithin. I encountered problems and instability as soon as width crossed the 4096 boundaries. I will now investigate 4096 x 4096. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
screenshaper Posted March 9, 2014 Report Share Posted March 9, 2014 @JFK That is the limit of the single output of the graphic board. We are discussing about video content size. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator jfk Posted March 10, 2014 Moderator Report Share Posted March 10, 2014 @JFK That is the limit of the single output of the graphic board. We are discussing about video content size. Yes I know that, reread Mike's original comment. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Leong Posted March 11, 2014 Report Share Posted March 11, 2014 Hi, Does any one have expirience with hi res h264 movies or animation? I already tried to test setup with four 1080p projectors with one seamless panorama. I need to use in my composition some high resoution video playback. for example 5500x1080 px or even 6834x1080px I would like to play that files with one machine with four outputs, I need playback to be perfectly synchronized. Right now it is very choppy and im wodering if it is becouse unoptimal encoding or it too much for my machine. The file plays fine on one screen without blending or scaling. our machine: i7 / X990@3,47GHz SSD ATI RADEON HD6900 moov.pl Very recently, I had a show for which I was provided 7 videos encoded in H264/mpg4 of 4096x1080 resolution encoded at very high bitrates - 59Mbps variable with a max of 79Mbps. All played well from one Display PC over 3 blended outputs except for one video, which i suspected was the encoding since client did not complain when the playback lost frames, paused then jumped to catch up. For the 3rd showing last week-end, he provided a new file for that video. it played flawlessly on show night. Most of the supplied videos were scaled to 4912x1xxx proportionately to fit the projection screen. The studio that made the videos could not provide higher resolution than that and had black borders top and bottom encoded in, knowing that I would have to scale up (overshoot) to fit the projection area of 4912x1080. Display PC relevant specs - ASUS X79 Deluxe motherboard i7 4930X Haswell overclocked to 4.4MHz (just a simple x44 multiplier over the BLK of 100) with Corsair H80i liquid cooler in a Cooler Master N400 casing, and Corsair silent fans. 16GB Kingston HyperX RAM (4x4GB for quad channel) set at 1600MHz 1 x 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSD for Windows Home Premium 2 x 240GB in RAID 0 mode Kingston HyperX 3K SSDs for Watchout software and show data (Note: I usually do not condone on-board RAID but had no choice as I could not get 6GB/s RAID cards here, or in time). Also, I don't think many encoders can code to such high data-rates. Only one I know of is Handbrake (GPU licenced, i.e. freeware). Thomas Leong 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Leong Posted March 11, 2014 Report Share Posted March 11, 2014 Oops forgot to metion in the Display PC specs - Graphics card was the 3GB 6-output ASUS HD7970 Matrix Platinum 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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