@varish

I have been able to run Isadora on a Mac Studio (M1Max). I am still trying out a number of Isadora scenarios on the machine. I have been impressed by the ability of the machine to support multiple video outputs natively, for me - this is the primary reason for choosing the Mac Studio. I have tested the multi video output options with (so far) up to 6 projectors + control monitor, and with two simultaneous Matrox TrippleHead2Go devices. The machine has remained quiet and it has operated beautifully. 

When using the Mac Studio I did notice a limited selection of video resolutions were supported compared to the AMD GPU’s in previous Macs. I installed SwitchResX to see if additional resolutions could be set. However, it did not appear to have any effect on available resolutions through the M1Max chip, even though the utility appeared to define more.

The availability of USB A ports, HDMI out, Ethernet, and audio out, make it much more direct when connecting peripherals.

It has nearly as much connectivity as the legacy trash can Mac Pro but that is about the closest comparison in terms of I/O support in a Mac for some time.

I tested Isadora in Rosetta mode with the OpenNi add on. I could not notice any performance loss. Although, I experienced consistent freezes on the OpenNi video and interface node using a Kinect V2.

The machine is compact and therefore is going to offer portability - perhaps again similar to the trashcan Mac Pro.

I am curious to how the machine will perform over time. It may be prone to sucking in dust and that may effect thermal performance.

Best Wishes

Russell

@etootitigbe This is part of what I am trying to do as well. I have the usb pro mk2 and would like to begin adding pixel control using a dmx to spi decoder. Have you had any  luck / developement? Also any tips on managing DMX output from Isadora, were you still trying to use EMU as well (I know it has helpful functions like oscilations built in that would have to be made manually in Isadora)

@woland Thanks! I did get this up and running and looking good yesterday. 'ppreciate it!

@j-grima said:

Is anyone out there using the iPhone camera as a live feed? 

 I've also used Airbeam Pro

Hi Anina,

That's a bit of a tough requirement, but you're missing one important point: The size of the surface you plan to project on since all the light power of the beamer will be "divided" by the size (surface is squared). Probably anything less than 10K lumens won't work at all, but again, the size of the projection has a far more significant influence than the lumens themselves.

You can try playing around with the throw calculator at projectorcentral.com. That would give you an idea. Just pick any 10K projector, pick a lens and set a size. It would give you an estimate of how good it is for different light conditions.

You will certainly want to pick surfaces where there's no direct sunlight hitting. You might also want to create some shadowed areas to project on.

A good option could be going for a multiple-projector setup. For Isadora, it is easy as long as your graphics card allows multiple outputs and the computer has enough power for your project. Besides allowing you to use less powerful projectors, it also would allow using different planes, which could be interesting.

Hope that helped.

Cheers

I've been using the Blackmagic Deck Link Quad 2 and I love it!

Cheers,

Hugh

@juriaan Thanks. Too bad the 8 fader is sold out.... Great find !

If you really need wireless, I highly recommend the TeraDek products: Teradek

You get what you pay for!

Cheers,

Hugh

@CitizenJoe I know you have experience making multiple graphics cards work together, and have had success using these configurations. Please feel free to share your knowledge about these configurations. In no way do I want to limit the sharing of techniques here :)

I have also had success with these configs, having had 3 cards working well in one machine running Isadora. In my case, I had 1 decent GTX card as my Isadora card, and 2 very inexpensive cards (all nVidia) connected for additional outputs. This config was good in that I had many physical outputs all seen as displays by the system. Only the GTX GPU was used for processing. For output, the texture was pulled back and passed to the cheap cards (that's why the cheap cards were great).
The downsides:
- a lot of overhead pulling the textures down and passing them to the other cards (very much like the BlackMagic option) this allowed decent framerates as long as I wasn't doing much processing.. it dropped fast when doing anything more than playback (this was running on an older machine as well).
- mostly untested, and not supported.

similar to what @Ran mentioned, Master Cue by Interspace Ind. is industries standard for professional presentations on huge events. They work reliably even in big locations, with very big audience, as they communicate by proprietary radio.

@woland

update: I was mistaken as the projector was set to overscan already. I read elsewhere that some Blackmagic devices disable it, but haven't checked it.