Eureka 3D

[veldeman]

Firstly, it's not the media server that does the artistic images - it's the person who uses it and what they do with and the person who creates the content for it.
Hugh

Right! But you need the tool to be able to do it.

20 Layers - what does that mean? 20 Images? 20 movies? What?
The A/B Mix paradigm is difficult to map to a lighting console.
Hugh

A layer can be:
- a video file (animated or not),
- or a BMP (animated or not),
- or a real-time effect like ribbons, real-time ocean, smoke etc...

Why would the the A/B system difficult to map?
It a 16-bit DMX channel and you make a transistion between two sets of layers.

Essentially Maxedia works off a standard, although powerful PC, with a Radeon 9800 graphics card and a 7200 rpm hard disk. As we already know from Catalyst - there's a limit to how many SD movies you can actually run off a hard drive - particularly something as lowly as a 7200 rpm drive, and it's well below 20!
Hugh

Of cource of you start running 20 video files from the S-ATA drives (150Mbyte/sec) then it starts dropping frames. Hey it's still a computer!
But since it does a lot of real-time stuff inside the graphic card they layers can go up without dropping the frame rates too low. I usually kept something like 60-70 fr/sec.

[samsc]

I usually kept something like 60-70 fr/sec.

SATA drives dont work anywhere near 150MB/s they are much much lower than that.
SATA drives dont work any faster than standard ATA drives - unless you use raptors.

You arent doing video at 70fr/s because 'video' playback is only 25fps.
No point in playing back any faster than that.
The refresh rate of the screen is not the playback rate.


Doing 3d objects is easy. Graphics cards can support millions of shaded triangles/second.
You should be able to do thousands of objects.
The problem is a control problem. And useability.
If you cant do anything useful - live - you are better off doing it in a different way.

[veldeman]

The problem is a control problem. And useability.
If you cant do anything useful - live - you are better off doing it in a different way.

And that's were the Maxedia succeeded in doing a good job...

[Spam Butterfly]

Right! But you need the tool to be able to do it.



A layer can be:
- a video file (animated or not),
- or a BMP (animated or not),
- or a real-time effect like ribbons, real-time ocean, smoke etc...

Why would the the A/B system difficult to map?
It a 16-bit DMX channel and you make a transistion between two sets of layers.

[Hugh]
But how does the media server know what is happening in State A and what is happening in State B
Because the media server needs to know two things:
Your Preview State (or Mix A) and your Program State (or Mix B), and then how you wish to transition from A to B.
State A or State B can change at any time - instantly - as the programmer adjusts their programming or overrides playback.

If you are controlling this from a lighting board, that's an awful lot of channels, if you are doing it properly.

In Catalyst to do this with say a movie and a mask on layers 1 & 2, and a movie and a mask on layers 3 & 4 then doing a cross dissolve between them takes 160 DMX channels....

Of cource of you start running 20 video files from the S-ATA drives (150Mbyte/sec) then it starts dropping frames. Hey it's still a computer!
But since it does a lot of real-time stuff inside the graphic card they layers can go up without dropping the frame rates too low. I usually kept something like 60-70 fr/sec.[/QUOTE]

?????

We're not talking about the refresh rate of the screen... Which could be 60Hz or 75 Hz

PAL movies run at 25 fps. NTSC movies run at 29.97 fps. Standard definition PAL movies running with the DV PAL codec - you're only ever going to get 4 movies running without using buffering techniques - and that's using a 10,000 rpm Ultra 320 SCSI drive. Thats a physical limit of what is possible with current computer hardware.

[Spam Butterfly]

Right! But you need the tool to be able to do it.

[Hugh]

A layer can be:
- a video file (animated or not),
- or a BMP (animated or not),
- or a real-time effect like ribbons, real-time ocean, smoke etc...

Why would the the A/B system difficult to map?
It a 16-bit DMX channel and you make a transistion between two sets of layers.

[Hugh]
But how does the media server know what is happening in State A and what is happening in State B
Surely state A or state B can change at any time - because you can queek a parameter at any time...
Because the media server needs to know two things:
Your Preview State (or Mix A) and your Program State (or Mix B), and then how you wish to transition from A to B.
State A or State B can change at any time - instantly - as the programmer adjusts their programming or overrides playback.

If you are controlling this from a lighting board, that's an awful lot of channels, if you are doing it properly.

In Catalyst to do this with say a movie and a mask on layers 1 & 2, and a movie and a mask on layers 3 & 4 then doing a cross dissolve between them takes 160 DMX channels....

Of cource of you start running 20 video files from the S-ATA drives (150Mbyte/sec) then it starts dropping frames. Hey it's still a computer!
But since it does a lot of real-time stuff inside the graphic card they layers can go up without dropping the frame rates too low. I usually kept something like 60-70 fr/sec.[/QUOTE]

?????

We're not talking about the refresh rate of the screen... Which could be 60Hz or 75 Hz

PAL movies run at 25 fps. NTSC movies run at 29.97 fps. Standard definition PAL movies running with the DV PAL codec - you're only ever going to get 4 movies running without using buffering techniques - and that's using a 10,000 rpm Ultra 320 SCSI drive. Thats a physical limit of what is possible with current computer hardware.

[jasonrudolph]

Found more info on this....

http://www.martin.dk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6438