I am building out a rig that requires 13 camera feeds…
I was looking at the blackmagic ATEM switcher and a smart video hub…
I could use two decklink quads but i hate the mini sdi cables and I also dont enjoy the idea of taking up two pcie card slots…
I really want the ATEM for the monitor previews… I am not sure if I can run a show without the previews…
havent ventured much out of the balckmagic line of capture gear so I dont really know what else is solid besides that
thoughts?
That’s the way I would go. Other SDI capture cards are quite expensive (unless it’s just SD, not HD), and multiple HD inputs will clog your system up.
SmartHub plus Atem, yes. We’ll be doing the same.
Bruce
so you would keep the existing BM decklink quads and grab the hub and the atem for switching duties? there is the possibility that I will be doubling my feeds with gopros which is why I am adding a hub to the atem…
again… not the best at this so THANK YOU for your advice
intimidating stuff with not much budge on the price at this level haha
that being said if there is a card that is more money and better I would much rather have that
Aren’t GoPros HDMI out? And the SmartHub is SDI only? That’s one problem.
yeah I will have to grab a bunch of converters…
I am trying to build a live camera matrix
for a real time “bullet time” effect
Ive used the BMD quads and they’ve always been reliable. If you just buy and carry some really short flips, the mini jack becomes a non issue.
I’ve seen very few sdi cards that take more than 4 in/outs at a time, and the ones I saw have probably never been tested with TouchDesigner.
Preview is generally key, you could always build something inside of TouchDesigner that just has a small preview of every incoming feed. 13 is an odd number to work with, so probably not very practical to pipe all of those feeds straight into TouchDesigner (as you’d need 4 BMD quad cards).
GoPros aside, and not sure exactly what kind of event you’re doing and how many feeds simultaneously you actually need, probably sticking with the 1 or 2 BMD quads, and then getting the preview monitors and switchers might be the most flexible bet.
What kind of stuff does your live camera matrix need to do?
That might dictate which route to go. If it’s a custom in-house project you’re working on, something to consider is having multiple computers with BMD quads in them, and then piping all of those to a master TouchDesigner machine that will deal with all the streams.
so the full setup in my fantasy land right now has 8 hdsdi robocams which will be taking care of the 5 band members on stage… then two wireless roaming dslrs…
all of those will need to be split and sent to an analog video synthesizer and also to touch…
then touch will need to also bring in the capture from the analog video synth…
my plan right now is to have two systems… one which will be taking the feeds and manipulating them and one which will be outputting to the LED wall…
so one system can be full of whatever kind of capture gear I need… and the other can simply have a decklink to grab the output of the capture rig…
the bullet time effect is kind of dependent on being able to switch the routing on the matrix with touch… to achieve this
youtube.com/watch?v=WDdxMBq2GW8
ive never seen it done live but it would be really fun to mix in… obviously it would be a little “raw” but… I think cool
Cool.
Depending on the budget you might want to setup 1 or 2 machines for the capture. 1 machine would need 3-4 quad cards, or 2 cards per machine in a 2 system setup. You can use one of them to send signal to the other to decide which streams make the cut, and both can have a monitor with previews on it. Might save the need for the switcher and hub solution.
Then like you said, just pipe the final outputs of those machines to your main machine with either a decklink duo or quad in it.
Not knowing what kind of “manipulation” you want to do, but the system might look something like this:
Capture Machine 1:
2 BMD quads
Quadro k4000?
1-2 monitors for preview and switching controls
Capture Machine 2:
2 BMD quads
Quadro k4000?
1-2 monitors for preview
Output and processing machine
1 BMD duo or quad
K5000
1 monitor
1 output to LED
Thanks elburz!
I am not planning on a ton of manipulation… some simple glitching/rgb splitting and what not… some coloring…
the analog synth takes care of the super psychedelic stuff
now to find a motherboard that has enough 16 lane pcie slots
Hmm. Good luck with that!
Actually - if they’re just four lane, you should be OK.
Bruce
doesnt the BM decklink quad need to be 16? I have had problems with it in my magma enclosure which is 8
I was looking at this
asus.com/Motherboards/Z9PED8_WS/
not the best computer builder but i think it would work
No, it’s four lane. You may find a motherboard with x16 for the GPU and four slots at 4x. It will probably be high end with a PLEX chip to expand PCIe lanes.
The downside is the Quad won’t do 3G (1080p at 60).
On the bullet time - very cool. You’ll have to freeze all the cameras at the same time to make that work (if they’re all playing, that’s just a camera move), so they all need to be prime inputs (direct into processing) at the time.
Also - when picking converters, be aware of latency. Make sure you get ones without scaling, like the Blackmagic boxes. Stick to progressive formats - 720p60 or 1080p30 with the quad. De-interlacing adds time. I’d expect the GoPro outputs to be fairly laggy too - that device isn’t designed for what you’re doing.
I’m using this one
supermicro.nl/products/mothe … DRG-QF.cfm
4xX16
Plus
3xX8
Nice thanks Achim!
I like this option because they have cases that fit right there… last time I bought a large mobo I had to macguyver getting the powersupply in there… it had 4 cpus tho so that was a dif story
Or get one of the superservers
supermicro.nl/products/nfo/gpu.cfm
They should have one with 8 x16
I don’t suppose you’ve tested using two quad deck links? I’m curious whether I could use two and do six out and two in, or similar? Let’s assume I have a beefy enough GPU. Will the passing back and forth between cards work out?
I suppose… if it’s x4, the two only make the same as one x8 card, should it should be doable?
I wonder if I need to feed all the inputs (even if using as an output) to get the outputs to be synchronous.
bruce
My friend uses 2 in his machines and has no issues. Not sure what motherboard config he has. 6 in, 2 out shouldn’t be an issue. Just remember that each quad has 4 lanes, so even though there are 8 connections on it for in an out, each lane can only EITHER do in or out. I was a bit off when I found that out about my decklink studio. They have tricky wording on their website.