Whats new in v4

[samsc]

download pdf:


Download v4 pdf


This version concentrates on ease of use.
Standalone operation.
Total backwards compatibility with v3 ( no new DMX channels ).
Show control features.
Tiger ( OSX 10.4 ) compatibility. ( and panther 10.3 ).
DMX Led fixtures and multiple on screen mixes.

[Jan Opseth]

Do you recomend upgrading to Tiger for this version?


Regards

Jan Opseth

[samsc]

tiger upgrading is not necessary.

it works ok in 10.3 as well.
there are no features that require 10.4

in my testing so far there is not much performance difference between 10.3 and 10.4

[samsc]

With the recent total change in apple architecture - and consequent unpredictable performance - v4 concentrates on safety for now.

v4 has been tested a little on the new g5's with pci express and seems to work without any serious problems.

v4 works with ATI and nVidia cards, doesnt use any technology specific to any graphics vendor.

I am still waiting for scsi cards and decklink cards that are pci-express.

Dont have a quad g5, and have no idea - at all - what the performance will be.

There have been reports on apple developer lists, of dual graphics cards working, but almost nothing has shipped to end-users yet.

[samsc]

If apple were to produce an xserve with pci-express, that would mean that the xserve would finally be usable.

it may or may not happen.

they may cripple graphics support again?

but the existing xserve architecture doesnt really cut it.

[Spam Butterfly]

It's worth bearing in mind that upgrading to Tiger will require you to upgrade your memory by 512Mb.

Tiger has it's own set of issues, but so far I have not observed any of the tearing and stuttering issues associated with the later Mac OS 10.3.x builds.

One thing to look at in Tiger is Quartz Composer. Catalyst (run under Tiger) will playback Quartz Composer compositions. RSS feeds/Midi/Audio stuff is not supported.

I have recently acquired a 2.3Ghz Dual Core PCIe Mac, and the performance on the nVidia 6600 is looking okay. Still waiting forward to the dual core 2.5Ghz and SCSI controller card.

Hugh

[samsc]

Tiger requires 1GB of RAM minimum.
But tiger works quite well.

Even on my laptop. Its not happy at all with 512MB.

---

In quartz composer layers - audio is supported - apparently - people have tried.
The RSS restriction comes from Apple's security concerns. they thought hackers might use it so they disabled it when quartz composer is in a quicktime application.

[tharding]

What about overlaps and edge blending for multi projector shows?

Cheers

Toby

[samsc]

i had a go.

couldnt make it work well enough in time.

this is a much more complex area than at first glance.

there didnt seem like any way to make this kindof thing foolproof, as too much depends on what is going on in projector world.

[tharding]

What I was really hoping for was just the 20% overlap in Widescreen mode. I always put up a test pattern for the projector guys to do their line up.

At the moment I can only use 4 layers because I have to use the 1-4 on one output and 5-8 on the other output. I then do the 20% overlap manually and record it as a reference position. It then comes down to the projectors to be lined up so the join is perfect.

If we had 20% as an option in Widescreen mode I could do exactly the same but use all eight layers.

Cheers

Toby