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Author Topic: SDI Playout Software Ben Edwards Film Handler Posts: 17 From: BRISTOL, CITY OF BRISTOL,ENGLAND Registered: Apr 2014 posted 05-03-2015 10:40 AM                        Think I asked about this before here by can find thread. Anyway this is a update, and request to see if there is other software I should consider. We are currently using the free version of YouPlay which is working quite well. We run a bring your own film night where we just bung on whatever people bring (without testing it, its all very rock and roll). YouPlay generally works well, we do occupationally get files which play slightly corrupted on the projector (but look fine in the GUI). HDV MPEG 2 seems to be the main problem. Last night we did get a odd one when it was a MP4 which had a number of short films and one of them played corrupted. Very odd. Strangely for the bring your own film night the only problems we have had is when we copy VOBs off a DVD but now we play DVDs on our blueray player to get round this. Anyway one of the restrictions of the free version we are using is that we cant jump back and forward within a file. We have to play it from the beginning in real time. This can be a real pain (when spot testing long video files) so I am thinking of getting the paid for version which is £330. Was wondering if anyone knew of any alternative SDI playout software we should look at. Ben  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 05-03-2015 11:17 AM                        The entry version of PlaybackPro is around the same price. Using a laptop or a desktop with a dual monitor-equipped video card, it enables you to have a control GUI on one screen while actually playing the video out to another (like a sort of ghetto DCP server!). The a/v guys for a lot of the private rental shows we have that involve speeches and clips (e.g. awards shows) use it, because it's very efficient at enabling computer-based playout without any risk of projecting the desktop (the secondary, video stream output remains black when it's not playing your actual video files). The gotcha is that it's only available for Mac.  |  IP: Logged Ben Edwards Film Handler Posts: 17 From: BRISTOL, CITY OF BRISTOL,ENGLAND Registered: Apr 2014 posted 05-03-2015 11:41 AM                        Is a PC we use and it does not look like it supports SDI. apart from that is looks great. Particularly like the fact you can assign volume levels to individual clips. Currently I have to busk levels through a (not very good) monitor speaker in projection room. I am currently looking at DrasticDisplay Pro. Ben  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-03-2015 05:52 PM                        I have used "melt" (which is part of the "MLT framework") under Linux (it might also run on other OSes), but, at least with the Blackmagic SDI card, it only properly played back material that was captured on the same system. No idea why and I didn't bother to troubleshoot it. This was two years ago and it may have improved since then. It is also possible that the SDI card and/or drivers had issues. I believe that mplayer has an SDI output option, too, but I never investigated that. One issue when outputting SDI is that the output format will be whatever format the original file was in, which means that shorts programs composed of material in different frame rates and resolutions will be glitchy unless you reformat everything into one file or multiple files with the same resolution and frame rate. If you can get everything into the same format, though, the hardware players are better and less troublesome. I like the AJA Ki-Pro as being reliable and fairly simple to use, but there are now several other options as well.  |  IP: Logged Ben Edwards Film Handler Posts: 17 From: BRISTOL, CITY OF BRISTOL,ENGLAND Registered: Apr 2014 posted 05-04-2015 04:02 AM                        Its a bring your own film night so we need to be able to play a verity of formats without transcoding. the more I look the more YouPlay seems the only option. It seems on the fly resizing is fairly rare.  |  IP: Logged Danial Simmonds Expert Film Handler Posts: 107 From: Kota Damansara, Selangor, Malaysia Registered: Jan 2008 posted 05-04-2015 07:44 AM                        Maybe you looking for a black magic DecLink that allows playout to SDI source and others depending on the board.  |  IP: Logged Ben Edwards Film Handler Posts: 17 From: BRISTOL, CITY OF BRISTOL,ENGLAND Registered: Apr 2014 posted 01-25-2016 12:31 PM                        OK, so thought I would give an update. We spent £350 on YouPlay and it did not work and could not get descent support from them. WE did not want ongoing support just to get it working in a fit for purpose new product type of thing. They seemed to be offering support but then when I tried to arrange a time for them to 'dial in' started ignoring emailed. Not impressed. Meanwhile we started using our Sanyo projector t run the night and tried to use VLC, whit is EXTREMELY unreliable when you try to use dual screen. It keeps on going back to maximising on the laptop screen even when it was happily playing fullscreen on the projector. Again not impressed. I have not found a media player that seems to work well. SMPlayer. Allows me to control video (start/stop) from the (separate) playlist and stays maximised on the second screen. Seems to have good codec support. Anyway thought it was worth sharing this.  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 01-25-2016 12:49 PM                     On these bring your own video nights, you will always end up with interlaced video or 1080p50/p60 footage from time to time, and even that is not the worst that could happen. It's consumer stuff, and you need consumer equipment to play it. No, you can't count on a DCI projector being capable to play these video formats all over just like that. I'd say get rid of the SDI solution and just play out through HDMI/DVI, to a normal home cinema or presentation projector if possible, as these will deal more gracefully with all these formats and timings. Which projector did you use before with that SDI-workflow? Some DCI projectors now have a decent automatic timing mode and integrated deinterlacer. I did use VLC for festivals, and it is usable and offers some nice options, but it is now a nightmare to configure properly. I like the realtime audio EQ, you can have it's controls on the primary screen and do audio-adjustments on the fly. A lot of these amateur videos are edited on laptop or monitor speakers, and these people are not nearly aware of what happens in the basement of their audiotracks... You may try MediaPlayer HC, https://mpc-hc.org/ it has a more dependable second screen option. We used it for a couple of years to play our trailer show. It also supports setting the display card frame rate to the content frame rate, and has all the necessary options to adjust scaling, aspect ratio, etc. The GUI is a lot more tidy than that hackers dream of VLC. It allows to save all config options to INI files. We actually developed a system of ini-file write-protecting and copying, so that the necessary settings could not be screwed up, and we called the app using a shortcut/btach on the desktop which allowed us to make sure it always started up using the proper INI file settings. I haven't used it for a while, but I think it is still a good solution. It has a playlist feature, and I learned that when I insert still images between videos, playout will stop there, which makes for a nice option to have intermission backdrops or introductory slides done very quickly. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged

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