Driving 4 1080p monitors with Red Rocket - PLEASE HELP

[Jeff McCoy]

Hello RedUsers! I am doing an experiment and I need your help.

I am trying to make a 4K video wall for a permanent in-office display. When I say 4K, it's not exactly "4K" but the goal is to drive all 4 monitors as a single monitor and drive them at their maximum native resolution.

Here is what I have done so far:

I have purchased four 42" HD (1080p) LCD monitors. These four monitors are mounted on a wall with two on top and two on bottom. When you total up the resolution, it makes 3840 (1920x2) by 2160 (1080x2) and that is still a 16x9 aspect ratio.

I shot some test content with my Epic at full-frame 5K (but frame lines for 16x9). I edited the text footage with Adobe Premiere CS 5.5 but have not exported the file yet.

To drive the 4 monitors on this "video wall", I am using a Mac tower (8-core, 16GB ram, solid state hard drive, new Red Rocket). I connected the Red Rocket to the 4 monitors, using a DVI cable (one per each monitor, totaling 4 cables).

I can successfully playback the raw Epic files using the latest RedCine Pro (v13) software at max resolution on these 4 monitors and it looks absolutely amazing.

My $1,000,000 question of the day is: How can I playback my EDITED video?

I assumed I could simply open my Adobe Premiere project and use the Red Rocket to playback the footage directly off the timeline (without exporting it), but I after trying that, it didn't work. After some brief internet research, it seems that even though Premiere is accelerated by the Red Rocket, it cannot send out a live monitor output via the 4 DVI cables, only a single feel via HD-SDI. Is that correct? If that’s true, and I cannot display my edit this way, is there a format that I can export the edited project as that will open in RedCine to play it that way? I cannot just play the raw files, because I have done some extensive editing, color grading, dissolves, titles and fx.

Anything you could suggest that will allow me to use my Mac tower and red rocket to drive 4 HD monitors as a single monitor at max res (pixel-for-pixel 3840x2160) would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you all!!!

 

[Jeff McCoy]

I forgot to mention that i suppose this is what the REDray is for.... haha. Well i need something in the meantime that can playback 4k video. Thanks!

 

[CK Olsen]

I may be wrong, but I'm not sure you can accomplish what you want in the manner you describe with the Red Rocket alone.

I'd recommend looking at the AJA Kona3G card , as it is designed primarily for 4K video Editorial/Playback. (www.aja.com)

Just saw ths working great on the NAB floor... and having used the predecessor AJA Kona3 at 2K for years, would highly recommend their tech support for brainstorming/troubleshooting.

Hope this helps,
CK

 

[Matt Ryan]

not sure if you have sdi inputs but this would work http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/decklink4k/

It might get expensive but you could go out sdi to a converter like this for hdmi http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/miniconverters/. But pretty sure you would have to purchase 4 of these....

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

If all you want is to drive 4 displays ... then the black magic decklink 4k is the way I would go too.

Yes, the Red Ray will eventually solve your problem too ... as will the Red Laser, which includes a Red Ray player.

I really do wish that Red provided an SDK or drivers for the Rocket. For Red centric shops it could be the one output card if it worked with Premiere/FCP/Smoke/Avid as an output device.

 

[Barry Bishop]

Hello RedUsers! I am doing an experiment and I need your help.

I am trying to make a 4K video wall for a permanent in-office display. When I say 4K, it's not exactly "4K" but the goal is to drive all 4 monitors as a single monitor and drive them at their maximum native resolution.

Here is what I have done so far:

I have purchased four 42" HD (1080p) LCD monitors. These four monitors are mounted on a wall with two on top and two on bottom. When you total up the resolution, it makes 3840 (1920x2) by 2160 (1080x2) and that is still a 16x9 aspect ratio.

I shot some test content with my Epic at full-frame 5K (but frame lines for 16x9). I edited the text footage with Adobe Premiere CS 5.5 but have not exported the file yet.

To drive the 4 monitors on this "video wall", I am using a Mac tower (8-core, 16GB ram, solid state hard drive, new Red Rocket). I connected the Red Rocket to the 4 monitors, using a DVI cable (one per each monitor, totaling 4 cables).

I can successfully playback the raw Epic files using the latest RedCine Pro (v13) software at max resolution on these 4 monitors and it looks absolutely amazing.

My $1,000,000 question of the day is: How can I playback my EDITED video?

I assumed I could simply open my Adobe Premiere project and use the Red Rocket to playback the footage directly off the timeline (without exporting it), but I after trying that, it didn't work. After some brief internet research, it seems that even though Premiere is accelerated by the Red Rocket, it cannot send out a live monitor output via the 4 DVI cables, only a single feel via HD-SDI. Is that correct? If that’s true, and I cannot display my edit this way, is there a format that I can export the edited project as that will open in RedCine to play it that way? I cannot just play the raw files, because I have done some extensive editing, color grading, dissolves, titles and fx.

Anything you could suggest that will allow me to use my Mac tower and red rocket to drive 4 HD monitors as a single monitor at max res (pixel-for-pixel 3840x2160) would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you all!!!

You could look into matrox

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/multi_display_software/mac_powerdesk/

 

[Clay Glendenning]

I've just started looking into this seriously after having seen the setup a few times in Vegas. A red ray projector is what I really would like to get my hands on, in the meantime, a 4-screen setup is what I am looking into.

Anyone have a decent setup running they could enlighten us with? Your theoretical recommendations would be welcome as well. I would like to keep costs lower, and monitoring off the timeline in PPro/AE or even Resolve isn't totally necessary, an export would work fine. Cheap(er) display recommendations?

Off to the search engine I go. Jeffrey, please let me know how things turn out for you in the end.