Playback advice for budget-limited exhibitions

[Randy Stankey]

Use an Apple TV box. Or a Roku... Or a FireStick... or whatever...

I suggest using the Apple TV because it will work almost out of the box. You'll need to set it up, connect to your network and make sure that there is a hard drive, somewhere on your network, set up for NAS. You'll need to make sure there is a media player app on-board. VLC is available for Apple TV.

I use this setup at home, for playing movies, and it works well. I have also used a similar setup at Mercyhurst to show movies and it worked well, there, too.

The only thing is that you'll either need to have a switcher or you'll have to blank the projector while you start the movie. The switcher is the best option but, once you get the hang of it, blanking the projector and hitting a button on the remote isn't a problem.

[Ryan Gallagher]

QLab's single day rental is nice on a budgetary line, but also a little... granular, in my opinion.

Side-by-side with QLab, I felt Mitti was way more intuitive and doing what I wanted right out of the gate, while also having useful feedback as part of the main window/pane defaults. Very easy to set a 1-5 cue loop and then skip onto the next cue(s) when time. Very slick setting the Video Output once identified and configured. Other things like having audio and web sources, Blackmagic support, and/or scaling/resizing visual sources are great too. I could probably mimic the absolute basics in VLC, but Mitti could actually elevate the production value to another level.

QLab looks more robust but is more expensive (not too much more just for Video, but way more expensive when you include all Audio or Lighting licenses too). I didn't spend as much time with it, but I thought Mitti's default interface was obvious and intuitive, whereas with QLab I didn't know where to start (and didn't want to start looking around to enable things like preview panes, wave bars, etc.). I might revisit in the future if I hit a limitation with Mitti.

Glad Mitti seems to be aligning with your needs. Cheers.

I'd inquire about your sound reproduction requirements if QLab is seeming expensive. If you historically are only doing 2ch audio in your organization then the free tier on QLab is all you need. (1 surface + 2ch audio). But yeah fundamentally QLab is a whole different class of tool compared to dedicated playout software like PlaybackPro or Mitti.

QLab can do layers, mapping, multi-screen installs, lighting etc etc. It's more closely related to other professional vision/audio mixing tools like Barco E2/S3, Christie Spyder, Dataton's Watchout, MadMapper, Disguise, etc... but BYO hardware horsepower and priced for the lower budget theatre market. Yeah they can all do simple content playout, but designed to do a lot more. Another one more in QLab's class (software baesd and affordable-ish is Millumen), but again, not designed around playout exclusively.

If you were windows driven I'd suggest another playout tool to investigate. CasperCG. Powerful, but not very user friendly. Main benefit though is that it is free/open-source.

If you wanted to dip your toe into DCP playout on windows (especially if dealing with mostly independent films/studios), you could look at NeoDCP. It's not cheap but it's far cheaper than hardware media servers and DCI projectors. Feature licensing mileage may vary, but apparently a lot of small film festivals love it.

[Joshua McGillis]

Yeah, QLab is definitely geared to a wider scale live production. There's potential for greater use there, buuuut I don't think I want to hang my hat on that when there's a more immediate and clear need.

If you wanted to dip your toe into DCP playout on windows (especially if dealing with mostly independent films/studios), you could look at NeoDCP. It's not cheap but it's far cheaper than hardware media servers and DCI projectors. Feature licensing mileage may vary, but apparently a lot of small film festivals love it.

Interesting about NeoDCP. Will keep that in mind for the future, but I feel (and fear) that getting DCP-able might be a decent undertaking of its own and I'm not sure how much of a benefit that would ultimately be. I mostly stopped looking at it once I saw the expense. Wasn't aware of a solution that didn't require DCI projectors. Guess we'll see though.

Something like Proludio seemed like the closest to that, but details on that are scarce and the monthly fee is too high for me.

[Dennis Benjamin]

I re-read your original post. So, I might be mis-understanding what you are asking. I'm a keep it simple stupid kind of guy. I would convert all content to a DCP and run it as part of the playlist of the film you are running. DCP-O-MATIC is a free program. Use it to convert all your clips to DCPs and add them to your playlist.

Or am I missing something?

[Joshua McGillis]

I re-read your original post. So, I might be mis-understanding what you are asking. I'm a keep it simple stupid kind of guy. I would convert all content to a DCP and run it as part of the playlist of the film you are running. DCP-O-MATIC is a free program. Use it to convert all your clips to DCPs and add them to your playlist.

Or am I missing something?

I could have been more concise in the OP. I would say the core ask is for recommendations of affordable, non-DCP playback/playout software that can elevate the presentation of a screening to a professional (or, at least, professional feeling) level and that accepts stills and videos as a source, at minimum. Mac support is likely a requirement for me right now, but I'm taking note of various Windows-based solutions in case my situation changes.

The DCP stuff is mostly just a tangent I think. But to clarify: at time of posting, I figured DCP was off the table because I don't have the resources (or physical accommodations) for a DCP server and DCI-compliant projector. I'm a KISS fan too -- so while something like neoDCP + DCP-o-matic (thanks, btw, wasn't familiar) sounds intriguing and could open up those doors, it's also adding another layer of complexity. I'm also not as technically familiar with DCP and related/supporting software, which can be a burden on my overall time budget; I would need to learn some fundamentals to have the ability to troubleshoot or work through issues that might come up (anywhere along that pipeline), put together a new workflow, re-spec / source / build a new server to run everything, etc. So I would need a pretty compelling reason -- like a greatly expanded available catalogue, or winning the lotto -- to pivot to DCP at this point, I think.

[Ed Gordon]

OBS -- Recommended sometimes as a free solution, but in an outside-the-box kind of way since it's made for streaming?

Joshua, you mentioned OBS in your first post. I downloaded OBS Studio and took a quick look at it and the related tutorials on YouTube, and it does everything you want. Yes, it is designed to facilitate producing a sophisticated live video podcast, but all those tools and plugins will also produce a single video file for playback.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Joshua, you mentioned OBS in your first post. I downloaded OBS Studio and took a quick look at it and the related tutorials on YouTube, and it does everything you want. Yes, it is designed to facilitate producing a sophisticated live video podcast, but all those tools and plugins will also produce a single video file for playback.

Yeah we use OBS here for that. Where you run into problems for "screenings" is getting it to do 5.1 or better audio (though it can be made to), and the fact it does not cross fade audio on the monitor outputs, which is what you have to route for live event audio. It is a free swiss-army knife, but it's not perfect for everything.