Wednesday, August 26, 2009

What's New at NSWN?

So, what's NEW this year at NSWN? Well, actually, not that much. We're doing a setup pretty similar to last year and in fact we've simplified some parts of it. We actually have fewer lights... But one addition we're adding is Pro Video Presenter. This is a big time software tool from Renewed Vision. I mean the big guys use this tool. Too bad we're not a big guy =(. We were able to rent one for a week to demo and see how it can work with our current setup. It's a great tool. How are we using it?

Well, if you've looked at our setup diagrams, which I'm sure everyone has thoroughly studied =), then you'll notice that we have 3 screens. The side screens are hooked up to one laptop and the double-wide center screen is hooked up to a different laptop. We want to play our new and exciting video on all 3 screens. But we ran into a few problems:
1. Center and Sides are at different resolutions - 2048x768 and 1024x768.
2. We're using HD resolution this year - 720 which is 1280x720. So the video natively will be a bit smaller to squeeze into the 1024x768 and won't use up the entire 2048x768.
3. Center and Sides have different inputs. How do you sync them?

We could play the video on the center only but we want everyone to see it well. We could play it on all 3 with smaller projector resolutions (1024x768) but that would be too small. Or we could play it on the center screen with the wide resolution and the side screens. But the different resolutions is what makes this so hard. So let's play them separately on each laptop. But how? And this is where Pro Presenter Video comes in. Using a special network protocol (yes over wifi), the software can sync itself across both laptops! It's amazing.

I'm sure I've confused some of you. Just come tonight and see it happen!
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3 comments:

  1. EvelynAugust 27, 2009 at 8:21 AM

    Whoa...COOL!!!

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  2. AnonymousAugust 29, 2009 at 9:34 AM

    Hi, this is brad from renewed vision. I just want to be clear we do NOT recommend doing this over wifi as you will encounter problems.

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  3. JohnAugust 31, 2009 at 12:21 PM

    Hey Brad thanks for the advice. We actually did end up creating a private network b/w two mac book pros. And it worked out pretty well. We had a hub in case we had to go hardwire. Airbears definitely was doing some QOS and port blocking so we didn't use them.

    We're still evaluating to see if we can use the software in our given environment. Everything worked pretty well. I should note that we were also running ProPresenter on the same machine and at the same time. We had to based on our constraints of machines and screens/projectors.

    We were able to test the software for both NSWNs and our SWS at pauley. VERY impressive. The cost is still a little high. I'm going to be pushing for us to use side screens more now at Willard. and that would be a good reason for the licenses.

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