Projecting simultaneous streams to multiple projectors?

[Jean Déraps]

I'm currently working on an 'interactive multimedia short film' event and would like to be able to project more than one simultaneous stream...there are 6 projectors (so up to 6 *different* streams would be possible). Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to go about this? I'm told the modus operandi will be to press the space bar on multiple computers... there has to be a better way!

Many thanks for your suggestions

Jean

 

[Anson Fogel]

Is it the same actual signal needing to go to the 6 screens? If so, Extron component or HDMI splitters work great, one signal in, 6 out. But if not, and you need to do time coordination on multiple players and signals, I can tell you how, but it requires some tricker hardware games.

 

[Jean Déraps]

Thanks Anson. It is for *different* signals...I'd like to try for 6 different streams, each going to a different screen. But this depends on whether or not it's possible..

 

[Anson Fogel]

Riiiiiight. Well, the no budget low budget option is as described prior - use cheap laptops or mac minis, hit play at the same time. Mac Minis works great, we've used them for some corporate customers where we turnkey shot, edited and installed displays in their HQ. But over time, the looping playback will drift out of synch - which in our case did not matter.

If they need to be tightly synchronized, youre getting into some serious $$ using embedded players that use MIDI show control or timecode to synch them up.I've looked all over for good sych solutions for use with Mac Mini's or cheap PC's without limited luck.

 

[Dominique Grenier]

If you can spend a little, Matrox creates a device called the TripleHead2Go which allow you to split a signal among three devices. You can then daisy chained a few to get the correct number of projectors (assuming you remain within the resolution limit). Either that, or you get two units with two laptops, having only two space bar to press instead of 6.

Basically, you create a very large quicktime that includes all your clips (or stream) stitched together on the X axis and within the Matrox software you assign coordinates to each display. So say, you set pixels 0 to 1280 goes to display A, pixels 1281 to X goes to display B, etc...

Here's the link for the device:

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/

Hope that help!

 

[rick youck]

check out this VJ software called modul8
http://www.modul8.ch/index.php?c=home

it was a few years ago, and we only played with 3 streams, but it is capable of outputting 8 streams (4 graphic cards, two monitors per card) via a macpro, as well as controlling and syncing them in some very interesting ways.

Add some creative editing and some Matrox triple heads from above post, and you could really go to town....

I've also seen this used in the mac world, but have no experience with it
http://www.renewedvision.com/pvp.php

good luck!

rick