Re: [Frameworks] Digital Playback for Festivals, Etc.
I would add that another very cool thing about the WD TV Live media players in particular is that some folks in the Netherlands have written open source software called HDSync that allows you to network multiple players for synchronized playback. It takes a little tweaking (it's open source and you have to update the firmware on the players) and it helps to know some unix (I didn't, but got help and learned a tiny bit) but it's a great, CHEAP solution for synched, multi-channel installation-type situations. This is their website if anyone is interested: http://syncstarter.org/hdsync/ I used it for a 3-channel HD video (h.264 wrapped in quicktime) and it worked great. Carl On 2/25/2012 3:10 PM, David Tetzlaff wrote: Two quick comments on Jon's reply: 1. One of the advantages of the standalone media players such as the WD or the Seagate FreeAgent Theater is that they will read hard drives in all the major formats: NTFS (current PC), FAT (old PC), or HFS+ (Mac). Thus there need be no issues with the FAT 4GB file limit. 2. Jon is indeed correct that the highest possible quality would come from a computer (which could be a laptop) equipped with additional hardware that can allow it to generate 'real video' HDMI/DVI or component out from less-compressed formats such as AppleProRes422. The major players in this sort of video hardware are AJA, Blackmagic Designs, and Matrox. The Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle and the Matrox MX02 Mini are small, easily transportable and relatively inexpensive ($200 - $500) interfaces that can work with laptops, and would be worth considering for makers who travel with their, would be bringing their laptops anyway, and can manage the modest extra expense. For a stationary installation, (e.g. exhibitors) a Mac Pro or a Quad Core Windows machine equipped with a standard PCIe Blackmagic Intensity card ($200) would yield HD-video out about 'as good as it gets'. However, with any computer, you get into limits dictated by the OS and the software: PCs won't read Mac drives; Macs won't write to NTFS; Mac software tends not to like .MKV containers, etc. Which means potentially more work on an exhibitor's end converting submitted files into something that works well with the system. But there's no perfect solution, and this would certainly be far superior to trying to juggle a series of tape and disc physical formats, all requiring different sorts of players. ___ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks ___ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
Re: [Frameworks] Digital Playback for Festivals, Etc.
Two quick comments on Jon's reply: 1. One of the advantages of the standalone media players such as the WD or the Seagate FreeAgent Theater is that they will read hard drives in all the major formats: NTFS (current PC), FAT (old PC), or HFS+ (Mac). Thus there need be no issues with the FAT 4GB file limit. 2. Jon is indeed correct that the highest possible quality would come from a computer (which could be a laptop) equipped with additional hardware that can allow it to generate 'real video' HDMI/DVI or component out from less-compressed formats such as AppleProRes422. The major players in this sort of video hardware are AJA, Blackmagic Designs, and Matrox. The Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle and the Matrox MX02 Mini are small, easily transportable and relatively inexpensive ($200 - $500) interfaces that can work with laptops, and would be worth considering for makers who travel with their, would be bringing their laptops anyway, and can manage the modest extra expense. For a stationary installation, (e.g. exhibitors) a Mac Pro or a Quad Core Windows machine equipped with a standard PCIe Blackmagic Intensity card ($200) would yield HD-video out about 'as good as it gets'. However, with any computer, you get into limits dictated by the OS and the software: PCs won't read Mac drives; Macs won't write to NTFS; Mac software tends not to like .MKV containers, etc. Which means potentially more work on an exhibitor's end converting submitted files into something that works well with the system. But there's no perfect solution, and this would certainly be far superior to trying to juggle a series of tape and disc physical formats, all requiring different sorts of players. ___ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
Re: [Frameworks] Digital Playback for Festivals, Etc. Re: new post on Brakhage
Oops! Wrong subject line. I replied to the wrong thread. On 2012-02-25, at 13:35 , Flick Harrison wrote: The smart festival will just ask the exhibiting filmmakers to provide a playback device which ships with their film, and charge a fee for the technical time required to set it up and test it in the venue. Problem solved! -- * WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD? http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison * FLICK's WEBSITE BLOG: http://www.flickharrison.com On 2012-02-25, at 13:35 , Flick Harrison wrote: The smart festival will just ask the exhibiting filmmakers to provide a playback device which ships with their film, and charge a fee for the technical time required to set it up and test it in the venue. Problem solved! -- * WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD? http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison * FLICK's WEBSITE BLOG: http://www.flickharrison.com ___ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
Re: [Frameworks] Digital Playback for Festivals, Etc.
Just some notes to add to David's suggestions, I've done pretty extensive research into this area and have found two great solutions. One is very cheap, the other, expensive. As David mentioned, the first is to stream the file off of a thumb drive through a Blu-ray player. This method's ceiling is blu-ray quality (1920 x 1080 ≈ 30 mbps) I've found that an H.264 codec with a (.mp4) container is the most universally recognizable and reliable file type (as it is one of the two compression methods blu-ray discs can use). You can use the free program, *MPEG Streamclip http://www.squared5.com/* to transcode the file into a H.264 (.mp4) The key with this method is to limit the bit rate to 30 mbps, which is about the average bitrate for blu-rays. If the bitrate goes too high, it will glitch unpredictably during playback. I used this method to playback Phil Solomon's video, *Rehearsals for Retirement* on an HD projector at an event last year and he said he had never seen it look so good. For sequential clip playback with this method, I've found that a regular PS3 works best. Just simply number the files 001,002, etc. and it will play them in succession. (* unfortunately, there is a little play icon in the bottom left of the frame when new clips begin for about 1 second. There is no way to get rid of it that I've come across, as it turns out it is the least intrusive of any other blu-ray player with sequential playback capabilities that I've tested. Still, I can see a lot of circumstances when it would be unacceptable) To lessen its interruption, just add about 2 seconds of black slug to the beginning of each clip, so that when the white play button appears, it happens over black, not the clip itself. Most players, including the PS3, can only read Fat-32 formatted external drives/ thumb drives. What this means is that there is a 4 gig file size limitation. To give you an idea, a 15 minute video @ full HD 1920x1080 h.264 (.mp4) with a bitrate of 30 mbps is about 3.2 gig. This method is great for shorts To play something longer, like a feature, you can still use this option, but you are limited only to blu-ray players that have the capability to stream files from Windows NTFS formatted drives, which there are few. LG makes some, for example, the *LG BD390 or LG BD590 are capable. With this method, you can theoretically play a file as big as the thumb drive can fit (still limited by the 30 mbps bitrate though. NTFS is a windows only file system, so MACs without special 3rd party software can read these files from drives formatted this way, but not write to them. If you have a Mac and you need to be able to write to an NTFS drive, you can use a program like, **NTFS for MAC OS X http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac. * Another method that I recommend, but costs significantly more is to use an AJA Ki Pro, or Ki Pro mini. This is a device designed for professional editors, or broadcast people to record analog or digital video signals straight to ProRes files to a hard drive or compact flash card. A lesser known fact though, is that is also able to playback the high quality ProRes files (through SDI, or HDMI) into anything that can input those signals. What this means is that you can just load your ProRes file onto the Ki Pro's hard drive, or the Ki Pro mini's compact flash card and playback the prores files at extremely high bitrates (at least in comparison to a highly compressed blu-ray, or h.264 .(mp4) or anything off of a computer. This is a broadcast quality signal, with professional audio outputs that looks amazing in comparison to the alternatives. It does clip based sequential playback without any lag between clips and can also loop single clips, or entire playlists. The difference in bit rates for these two methods is 184 Mbps for the Ki Pro at ProRes 422 (HQ) and ≈ 30 for blu-rays or h.264 (.mp4) Regardless, both methods look great. - Jon Perez On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 7:28 PM, David Tetzlaff djte...@gmail.com wrote: We've discussed here before the problems faced by festivals and other exnhibitors one one hand and makers on the other, inherent in the proliferation of different digital file formats. The problems of 'how do we put it all together to play it?' and 'what kind of file should i send them?' While, in the past, I had advocated trying to establish some kind of low-cost standardization, where exhibitors would have to agree to 'get on the same page,' there seems to be little interest in that. As such, I've since concluded that the best practice would be for exhibitors and makers to invest in 'multi-media players.' These are devices, generally about the size of a hardcover book, are designed to create video signals from data files on a USB hard drive, and pass them on to a video display via an HDMI cable. (They often also have internet connections to display streaming video from Netflix etc. though that's not really germane to this particular discussion.) -- I'm
