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Author Topic: Pro hardware video players Antti Nayha Master Film Handler Posts: 268 From: Helsinki, Finland Registered: Oct 2008 posted 08-29-2012 04:21 AM                     Let's discuss professional-grade hardware HDD/SSD video players a bit. I recently used an AJA Ki Pro to playback pre-show content and ads at a festival. Very handy when your auditorium is not equipped with D-Cinema (when it is, you can just make DCP's if you have the time and rendering horsepower to handle it). The "plain" Ki Pro only plays ProRes 422 QuickTime files, although there are newer models that can also do Avid DNxHD. The strict file format / codec requirements don't bother me, since the content will have to be specially prepared anyway. The device was primarily designed as a recorder, but works great as a player as well (although with some annoyances, such as the limited playlist functionality). You just transfer the files to the HDD using FireWire 800. The reliability is way above laptops or Blu-Ray players, and you get all the pro outputs including HD-SDI, AES and XLR. Now I'm also looking at Sound Devices' PIX 240. At a quick glance, the feature set seems pretty similar, plus there's a built-in monitor which the Ki Pro lacks. Any experiences with either of those, or similar devices?  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 08-29-2012 07:01 AM                     There are literally hundreds of them, show players, etc. Doremi also makes a few. I have dealt with some of them for exhibitions and art installations. Each one has their own set of interesting features, but you really have to dig into the menus and manuals to find their strenghts and weaknesses. All comes down to your specific need of features. Admittedly - one should be open to A LOT of different codecs when it comes to alternative content. And that usually means one should probably go for a consumer device like WD-TV. I think there are very few devices with a Pro approach AND a lot of supported codecs. Many BluRay Players nowadays also play most codecs from USB-Stick or hard-discs. If you are limited to very few codecs, or only DNxHD or ProRes - you could just as well compile DCPs with todays free software solutions and then have all playlist/automation features that the cinema server offers instead of using a separate device. Maybe the money for the player is better invested into a small, but very fast MultiCore J2k encoder PC. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Antti Nayha Master Film Handler Posts: 268 From: Helsinki, Finland Registered: Oct 2008 posted 08-29-2012 07:57 AM                     quote: Carsten Kurz If you are limited to very few codecs, or only DNxHD or ProRes - you could just as well compile DCPs with todays free software solutions and then have all playlist/automation features that the cinema server offers instead of using a separate device. Yeah, of course. Like I said, these devices come in handy at venues without D-Cinema equipment. Converting content to ProRes is also much faster and more straightforward than creating a DCP - not really an issue with trailers and ads, but for anything longer it's something to be considered. I also understand that consumer-grade, multi-codec devices can be useful in many situations. However, this time I'm interested in opinions about the pro stuff.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-29-2012 08:59 AM                        The AJA box works fine and seems to be reliable. The UI is a bit odd, but is not really a problem once one is used to it. The disk storage has no redundancy, so I would not want to play a feature-length movie on it (at least not without a second player as a backup), but it works well for things like policy trailers. If I remember correctly, it doesn't have any obvious way to control it with an automation system, though there is a somewhat clunky web interface for it. It might be worth taking a look at the Alcorn Mcbride product line as well. I have no personal experience with their equipment, but their products seem to be popular for this sort of application. Finally, the Ipad deserves a mention. Yes, really. If you don't need automation control, it works well and has a simple playback control UI on the touch panel that controls the output to the video projector (via a VGA or DVI interface) without sending any sort of on-screen display to the projector. The major weak point seems to be the 1/8" mini-phone audio connector, which is just asking to get broken, but it is otherwise a reasonable option. I would not buy one personally (the non-user-replaceable battery is a deal-breaker), but it works well for this sort of application.  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 08-29-2012 11:06 AM                     Well, the Ki Pro is a production tool, not actually a media player. It goes for around 4000-5000 US$ I think, and most pro features are not needed in a cinema environment. The Geffen HD-DSP - Digital Signage Player e.g. goes for a fraction of that price. If there is no DCI projector, I wouldn't see a reason why not to use a dedicated general PC like a MacBook Pro or the like... It is more flexible on the Codec side, allows input from more media, if you absolutely need SDI, you add a BlackMagic card for a few hundred bucks. Different story if you need a fixed installation for advertizing including automation, maybe remote control and ingest. Also I think, for alternative content, native MPEG-2 and h.264 support is an absolute must nowadays. Honestly, which cinema without the budget for a DCI projection system would spent 5000 US$ for an alternative content player? - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-29-2012 11:50 AM                        quote: Carsten Kurz Honestly, which cinema without the budget for a DCI projection system would spent 5000 US$ for an alternative content player? Probably none, but they might rent one for a special screening. As for the general-purpose computer, that works reasonably well. I have done this with the Blackmagic HD-SDI card on a Linux machine for shorts programs--I captured uncompressed HD from HDCAM tapes as AVI files and then played everything back (using the regular VGA output, not HD-SDI, as I did not have a disembedder box) with mplayer, which allowed playlists to be made easily. If going this route, be aware that a) mplayer has several deinterlacing schemes, some of which are good and some of which are hideously bad (so test and find the best for your setup) and that b) uncompressed 4:2:2 HD requires significant disk bandwidth; I used four regular 7200 RPM SATA disks (with a single filesystem striped across them using mdadm software RAID) and found that to be the minimum configuration that worked reliably without dropping frames (15K RPM SAS disks would be even better).  |  IP: Logged Bajsic Bojan Expert Film Handler Posts: 190 From: Ljubljana, Si, Eu Registered: Aug 2008 posted 08-30-2012 02:13 AM                     I used the Ki pro a number of occasions and while the ability to put on files via fw800 and record HDCAM/Digibeta through HDSdi, portability of the device, is great, I cannot consider it because of no codec diversity (limited to ProRes). Add to the fact that mac computers are scarce here and the acquisition of a Ki Pro would likely require another purchase of a sole Mac with FCP (another 2500$ here), just makes little sense. For the most part, we get material in h.264, for some alternative content, but for instance, for a short film festival we got 200+ submissions, in 120 different codec combinations. Any STB we tried had issues with at least 25% of those. The 'consumer' STBs like the WDLive could play consumer formats pretty well, but would crap out on anything 'mac' like ProRes and quicktime .mov. The Aja could handle the ProRes, but not much else. We tried the 'dedicated PC' route, using VLC, but using this with extended desktop, setting up VLC to work properly there, it took a lot of time and effort to get mediocre results. The output was 5ft of DVI to a scaler and we still had artifacts like occasional horizontal splits, image and sound dropouts, codecs spontaneously not playing. Add to the fact that some material was in 'post-production' type codecs that couldn't be played back without glitches anywhere, you have a mess. It was decided to stick, for reliability reasons, to a STB like the WD for now, and we now demand the material in one of the decent codecs it supports (ie. h.264 @1080 @25MBps or mp2t @1080 @25MBps) and leave it at that. If one cannot supply a codec we can play (or a DCP), one needs to bring his own playback device, or we can convert the material (if we have enough time, which is usually not the case). The pro playback servers seem to be a good option, but would depend on what one usually gets from the locals. And of course the amount of the material. Makes no sense to spend 10k$$$ for something you would need maybe twice a year. Another reason why a 150$ WD with integrated disk is just better.  |  IP: Logged Yinghong Wu Film Handler Posts: 32 From: Suzhou Jiangsu China Registered: Apr 2012 posted 08-30-2012 02:35 AM                     I use OpenDcp to generate short film in our cinema,very handy.  |  IP: Logged

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