video-out

another work-in-progress update for the *spark d-fuser aka dvi mixer project: here we have the v1 pcb design, parts specified, plans drawn, and — with shawn multimeter in hand — the leg-work translating that into something that works. the real announcement here, though, is this: i will be presenting the project in full in berlin on the 12th june, so expect to know a lot more about what, when and how around then.

http://festival.visualberlin.org/day-program/
http://festival.visualberlin.org/news/spark-dvi-mixer-coming-to-berlin/

aaah, a proper theatre. well resourced, good tech crew, and a lovely auditorium for the audience.

its been quite some time since november and nothing visible has been happening. this is a quick post to say that stuff is happening behind the scenes, albeit with lots of delays caused by my spare time being completely out of sync with people i’ve been trying to get things going with. but now the momentum is back, and here shawn bonkowski and i are choosing sliders from the seemingly limitless selection on offer.
being trained in product design and loving this book, i’d have said i have a fair understanding of how much work it can take to transform a prototype into something suitable for manufacture and the real world. but i have to admit, this has taken far far longer than i expected. though now, i think, i can say that the controller is falling into place: still far from having a final, manufacturable, design, but the road to get there is clear and doable.

in barcelona on a solo d-fuse mission: particle to audio by asférico, refactored down to a dualhead screen setup. good gig: refactoring prep worked out, no nasty surprises throughout, performance felt smooth.

here’s an update on the dvi-mixer project; i’ve been through the replies to the expression of interest, am working on some things that have come up, and here are a load of answers to common questions that came up.

CONTROLLER

Tap buttons: This is something a fair few people have asked for, and yes, I’m planning on adding this in.

Some kind of switch to route A or B to the output: Apart from temporary overrides of the tap buttons, the crossfader will be the only control for this. Its the hardware angle of just knowing that whatever the crossfader is set to, is what is actually happening. That said, I understand the concern of guaranteeing a solid output of A or B, not a flickering mostly A and a bit of B, and there’s already some logic in there to only start crossfading after a certain movement away from the extremes.

DJ-style faders: A single crossfader is all the control an over/normal or multiply blend mode needs. When you have additive mixing, you might want the A and B levels to be more than simply what is on either side of the crossfader’s knob. I’m thinking about this, DJ-style faders is probably overkill (expense, signal noise, break-ability and loss of simplicity of control surface), a fader curve setting at the back alongside the resolution setting is what I’m preferring at the moment.

Still button: I’m in the fence but looking into this. Displaying a preloaded still is possible, but then why not just full-screen an image on your laptop? A button to hammer on each channel while mixing live is probably not doable with the hardware as-is. We’ll see.

Single controller, multiple processors: This would fit what I want to do with a v2 controller.

Ethernet / OSC / Midi interface: This would fit what I want to do with a v2 controller.

Fader response time: Currently, this isn’t as I’d like it. Its been fine for D-Fuse or *spark use, but a scratch mixer it isn’t. Talking to the manufacturer turned up a technique that I hope should sort the communication side, and we should be shipping with a crossfader with much better electro-mechanical qualities. Regardless, there’ll be a demonstration video showing exactly the kind of response the shipping models will have before taking anybody’s money.

PROCESSOR

Higher resolutions: The hardware can only go so high. There is a bandwidth limit and a line length limit, so while it can do 1920x1200, it can’t do 2400x600 which is actually fewer pixels. I’d love it to be otherwise, I have a major project that really needs that Triplehead at 800x600, let alone the requests for 3072 x 768 I’ve had! Still, triple 640x480, dual 1024x768 and straight 1920x1080 are such a leap from 720x576. Addressing this seems the obvious next step for a version two of the processor.

Different resolutions: The twelve timings I settled on (six resolutions at 50 or 60Hz) were what seemed the most useful in my experience of AV work. Now bear with me: the processor has stored many more resolutions, but to get the plug’n’play ability I want the EDID info transmitted on the inputs needs to match. The tweaked firmware should increase the number of EDID memories, but this isn’t finite and we might not even get twelve. So as shipped, I haven’t had feedback that changes what the six common resolutions would be. The good news is that they should be reassignable, the bad news is that it won’t be trivial - lots of fiddling at your end.

Dual-link DVI: See above, the unit cannot process dual-link resolutions. There is a bonus here in that single link DVI cables are nicer, they should bend easier and weigh a good chunk less than dual-link ones. The dual-link cables I have are the single thing I really don’t like about the setup.

DVI-I sockets: You get DVI-D and VGA in the same socket, done right. Mix and match DVI or VGA inputs or output. EDID transmitted on the inputs that can be independent of what the output is doing.

Additive blend mode: The good news is that this should be happening! This is supercool, a great win. Also I’d had a blind-spot in not asking for multiply as well, so thanks to the feedback this is on the list as well: in terms of implementation, they’re pretty much equivalent, so the omens are good.

Photoshop-style blend modes: No chance. From my personal perspective, this is where you want to be doing stuff in software, the mixer is there to guarantee your signal to the projector, to give a hardware controlled fade to black, to allow seamless switching between between laptops outputting an image already fully composited in the modern vj app of your choice.

Audio In/Out: I’m not touching audio for a load of reasons, but would like to make a v2 controller that is controllable externally, so you could link an audio mixer with this via Midi / OSC for instance.

Split/Preview output: Its just two in, one-out. If you want to split anything, you’ll need separate DAs. Typically for me this is downstream of my TripleHead anyway, splitting the three VGA projector feeds to have a monitor preview of each.

TripleHead: Any TripleHead is separate to this. Bring your own if you want to use one in conjunction with the mixer. I’ve tested with a TH2Go Digital Edition only.

Latency: As per the fader response time, there’ll be a demonstration video showing exactly the kind of response the shipping models will have before taking anybody’s money. While we’re at it, the processing is in 24bit 4:4:4, so there should be no quality loss because of the mixing.

Internal power supply: It sucks, but its an external power supply for both the processor and controller I’m afraid. I did work through an all-in-one version, but the cons outweigh the pros.

THE SWEDES WON’T BUY A PIG IN A SACK

What a great saying; hat tip to Mikael. Once I have a processor running the tweaked firmware, and a controller representative of what will ship, I’ll make a video to show it all in action, and have the purchasing terms all laid out. And hopefully, you won’t just have my word to take for it… more to come soon.

well… the word is officially out, and rippling around the internet. never seen so many twitter mentions or positive adjectives next to my name - which is nice - but the real deal is are there enough people out there who want one to make a limited production run from the prototype: its not about interest, it will be about orders. http://tobyz.net/tobyzstuff/projects/dvi-mixer

is amazed from this example of userGeneratedProduct: 1° #DVI #Mixer supporting Matrox/Hd. @tobyspark http://tinyurl.com/yfnt4vh Support! - Davide Gomba, http://twitter.com/VonGomben/status/5041067954

So now it is here. Not quite. Its really up to you now to go over to his page and put your money where it counts and order one of these things, custom built just for you. Your support will drive this device into demand. - ilan katin, http://www.modul8.us/2009/10/dvi-mixer-finally-someone-has-done-it.html


the performance was to be the newly transformed great north museum’s event space, a big, white, and empty room. standard two layer ‘proscenium arch’ presentation not so suitable, mike came up with a triangular staging.

and to answer the title of the first post, here is the best i can do, courtesy of the freestate photographer.

of course, you’re missing six of the satellite screens, two facing in just out of sight offset at the far end, and the four to mirror that end behind the camera’s position. buts the nature of the beast: you can’t watch a 11,000px quicktime, you can’t watch a 3200x1080 crop alongside four 768x768 crops, you can’t get everything in with the viewing angle of the unaided eye even in the stand. thats what immersive, or certainly surround, means.

i hope we can pitch again next year, impressive as it all was i really want to break away from these big white walls…

from pitch and the day-long meetings to kick it off, its now three months later and i’m actually in the sony stand at ifa 2009. a non-disclosure agreement, a 11,000x1080px canvas in after effects, 15 full-bore mac pros compositing their slice of the 400GB drive image full of particle layers and product prisms, eight screens pixelmapped in surround across the stand’s towers… its been one of those projects of scary statistics, corporate reputations riding on the line and knowing there is no preview, the not-yet-there architecture is the output monitor.

to take a step back, d-fuse won the commission to create the video environment that forms the centrepiece of the stand. having contributed to what in effect were a series of brand films last year, this year was the real thing: together with andy visser’s sound design, creating an audio-visual environment to give a… well, how to describe: something between an emotional journey and a feeling of space to the stand. i like freestate’s vision for the stand, almost as parkland with scattered mini-booths of products, rather than the products! products! products! you find elsewhere.

so its a nice moment to see have mike, mr d-fuse, and adam, mr freestate, in-situ and discussing the finer points of trade-show land with smiles, looking at a stand that pretty much nailed what was discussed those months ago.

after much shenanigans, keane3D did happen and d-fuse were part of it. no mapping-on-keane-artwork-triangles-with-antivj, no live layered-in-space reactive projections, either of which should have worked amazingly with the multi-3Dcamera filming setup, instead the program graphics. this meant on the day i was in charge of getting the content into the more-than-impressive and bespoke for the occasion outside broadcast rig - always be prepared to reencode everything squatting round the back of a rack of equipment - so always a nice moment when you actually see it going out live from the gallery.