Older Catalyst and HD

[SourceChild]

Which G5 will be needed to playback max 1 movie SD (3 mix outputs)?

If you have a newer G5 that has the PCIe you can get an X1900XT.
If you have an older PCI-X G5 I suggest getting a new Mac Pro.

You could use a DH2G on the X1900 and run three outputs but I don't recommend it.

And what in the case of 3 movies SD?

A G5 can run 3 layers of SD without a faster disk or better video card. I strongly suggest a Mac Pro instead with an Mtron SSD and X1900XT.

[samsc]

YES
A G5 can run a TH2G. I have run 800x600@60Hz and 1024x768@75Hz.
Doing this I can run six layers of SD. I have a client that does this now and has been doing 5 shows a week with it for close to 2 years now. All the content is AIC@25fps 2816x768.

the original poster was referring to a pcix dual 2.7Ghz g5- the pci-x g5's cannot do anywhere near this kindof thing.

[samsc]

YES
A G5 can run 3 layers of 1920x1080 progressive (note that this is not 1080p or 1080i).

what do you mean by this?

This makes no sense...

The video card must be changed and the computer requires more than 2Gb of memory and an SSD.

change the video card? from what to what?

I have done this with few frame drops only on a single output system. Absolutely no sync though, it started dropping frames like mad when I tried to sync.

No idea what you mean by this - but it seems you might be contradicting yourself in saying it worked...

this is all mixed up - and refers to multiple things all in one sentence - each one of which is unclear and ambiguous.

YES
Three screens can run 1920x1200 on a single Mac Pro. I do this now in my studio at home. Two on a TH2G digital in Dual head mode and one on the second output using X1900XT.
This is very taxing on the system if I run video on the TH2G output. Video on the single screen works fine.

? ? ? ?

you say it works - then you say it doesnt.... and only works on a single screen....

Another possibility you can try is to use Fibre channel cards in a Mac Pro and in a G5. Use the same disk in your Pro and Fibre link it to the G5. You could then run HD on each output of the Pro and a single on the G5.
This is not necessarily a good idea but it would work.

??????? fibre link discs ??????? why? what would that achieve?
sharing discs?

Im not aware of any way to do this.

Something else very important to be aware of... If you try to sync different edge blended machines, you will experience frame delays across projectors. You won't notice this if you have separate screens side by side but you will most certainly notice when you have edge blending from different computers. It's subtle but something you'll notice with fast moving content across an edge blend done by multiple machines.

i cant see how this relates to the beginning of this post ?????

[efxmaster]

Thanks for everyones help. The show went great, and everyone was blown away by what the Catalyst was capable of. I ended up using 3 screens, 2 of which were at a very bad spot to project from. So I did not have a direct path to the screen, I had to put it off center and use the keystone feature on the mix output to correct for it. That was the main thing that blew away everyone. It looked great and was able to handle the videos fine. Here are a few pics of the event. In one of the pics you can see the Catalyst menus on the wall next to the screen.

[Gian]

YES, the decklink works great as INPUT, 1080i no problems.
NO Outputs

[Mr_P]

Also - don't install Tiger on a brand new 2008 MacPro - stick with Leopard.

I'll have access to my system later with HD Extreme in it - I'll take some snapshots of the preferences panels which may help you to diagnose your problems.

S

[samsc]

Also - don't install Tiger on a brand new 2008 MacPro - stick with Leopard.

I'll have access to my system later with HD Extreme in it - I'll take some snapshots of the preferences panels which may help you to diagnose your problems.

S

there is only one decklink preference that matters so far- thats the decklink video desktop. this must be turned off.

sounds to me like the main output screen is set to the decklink card.

none of the other problems here have been reported or relate to catalyst.

the card slot of the decklink card matters very little when doing video input.