Hardware requirements for multi-display setup

[pokerha...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I'm new to QLab and want to know what hardware requirements in general I should look at (cost-consciously) for the following show requirements:

4 displays

3 of which are showing may be showing live displays (of different cameras) in a single cue

Any help is much appreciated.

-Brian

[Harry Butcher]

Just a little more information - What are the displays? monitors/Projectors and what size will the surface be?

[pokerha...@gmail.com]

3 TVs (currently using HDMI) and 1 Monitor (Control Screen) - 1 Large TV (55 inch), 2 32 inch, Monitor is around 27 inch. Would prefer 1920x1080 for TVs, 720p at worse.

Thanks for help.

[Jeff Maynard]

Are the TVs displaying the same image? Or are you looking for 3 individual production outputs (+1 control)? If the TVs are showing mirrored outputs, you simply need a decent-quality HDMI splitter, and a Macbook pro would suffice to drive the video itself.

If you're looking at 3 distinct and different outputs, it gets more complicated and much more expensive very quickly. QLab is very capable of doing it, but the limitation is how many physical outputs your hardware has.

I have spec'ed and used Mac Pros with dual graphics cards before. If both graphics cards have 2 DVI outputs, you get 4 outputs, each pair being driven by a dedicated graphics processing unit. So the first port of the first (top) card would be your control display, and the other three ports would go to your TVs. This is the ideal setup. The dedicated graphics cards handle that much crunching much better than a laptop with their puny integrated graphics adapters.

DVI naturally converts to HDMI. You just need an adapter plug. It's the same language. Almost all Apple-approved graphics adapters will be able to pipe out 1080p to your TVs, so you're covered there.

If you need to use a Macbook Pro, it gets a little stickier. They send video out on their universal Thunderbolt adapter now. Old Macbook Pros, like mine, only have one Thunderbolt, and so they can only send 1 output, in addition to their affixed display. To achieve a multi-display rig, you will need to buy a module such as the Matrox Triple-head-to-go, which hijacks a single output and internally divides it in 3. Old versions that I used preferred to output no larger than 1280x1024 (this was back in the day of 4:3 projectors), so you'll lose your high-definition.

New Macbook Pros have 2x Thunderbolt ports. Logic suggests that you may be able to get each port to output different video, to a total of 2 outputs, without an additional module. I have not tried this. You would want to ask someone at the Genius Bar whether you could get two secondary screens off the Thunderbolt ports.

A Macbook, Macbook Air, or Mac Mini will not really have the system resources to deal with this kind of video processing.

This is my current freelance playback machine. It struggles running 3+ 1920x1080 videos. The Intel Iris 1526MB graphics adapter is doing better, but QLab is still getting clunky running 3+ 1920x1080 videos. I would consider this the absolute minimum to work with HD graphics, and you'd be better off going one click up.

Hope this helps.

[pokerha...@gmail.com]

Thanks for your reply - I am looking for different outputs - 3 different cameras to 3 different TV outputs. I think a Mac Pro would cover it relatively easily, but I am looking at something less expensive if possible, but I might be resigned to that option.

[pokerha...@gmail.com]

I suppose I should have asked this first but can QLab handle 3 input to 3 ouput live with a Mac Pro, or would I need something like Isadora? I would prefer to use QLab if it can be done as I prefer the QLab cueing system to Isadora's.