Two THTG from one Mac Pro

I've been running some tests to see if it was possible to run two THTG from one machine. Some posts on here say it is possible, others not. Same story when I spoke to some of you on the phone. End of the day, I hooked up 6 x 1024x768 monitors to see what I could get.

At first, I got nothing. As soon as I plugged the second THTG into the Mac Pro, the first THTG went blank and the second never registered anything. I tried switching ports and all sorts, still nothing. Then I logged in using Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) while I only had one THTG and a single monitor on the second output. I unplugged the single monitor and plugged in the second THTG and all the monitors went blank again. However, ARD still thought the single monitor was plugged in and I was able to access the Display System Preferences and set the monitors accordingly. Then I had to run back to the theatre and left the video testing to my colleague.

He came up with the following...

"Three 10 minute clips of 1080p (1920 x 1080 progressive)
Four 10 minute clips of 720p (1280 x 720 progrssive)

I've also had up to 12 30sec HD loops working fine and SD video doesn't seem to be a problem."

I interpret this last comment to mean that he had 14 Layers of SD content running without dropping frames. He's gone on holiday for three weeks, so I'll have to wait for particulars. However, I wanted to get this up before I forget about it.

We are running an 8 month old 8 core Mac Pro at 3.2Ghz with a GeForce 8800 GPU and 2 x 64Gb Mtron drives.

Kevin

Hi Kevin,

Good to see the ARD trick worked, can be a life saver some times!!

What control system where you using for the tests?

Imagine a scenario where the server crashes. It already takes about 90 seconds to get booted up. If you need to log in through ARD, change resolutions, and adjust setting, you could add on as much as an extra 2 minutes.

Incidentally though, if you still want to run 1280x1024x6 or 1024x768x6 consider writing a scrip which automatically changes the screen resolutions. The script could work the same as what you are attempting to do now and the script can be executed through an automator action.

When I've done 2 TH2G in the past, this is exactly how I've done it.