Virtual Media Servers

Hello:

Obviously without knowing whether or not you have any understanding of Media Servers at all, it's difficult to write this without teaching granny to suck eggs (i have no idea where that term comes from). 

So....

A media server enables Lighting Consoles to control video in a somewhat more elegant manner than in years gone by. Essentially, with a media server, you are calling folders and files on a computer, and manipulating their output to a video surface (LED Screen, Projector, etc). So lets say that you call folder 1, video number 30. In general, you can have 255 folders containing 255 files, so with DMX therefore, you have a DMX Channel that can choose the folder, based on outputting a value between 0 and 100 (which is of course 0 to 255 in real terms) and then a second channel that can call file 0 to 255 within those folders.

So.....

We can now chose files and folders, beyond that there would be other channels that can deal with keystone corrections, colour manipulation, rotation around X, Y, and Z axes, and so on. Essentially we have a moving light, with a pretty unlimited quantity of animated gobos. 

Most media servers are also able to handle 'Pixel Mapping'  this is where you may (almost at it's most basic) have say a grid of 6 x 6 LED Pars. Each of these pars is then treated as a single pixel, and again, we can chose to play out our media across these pars, as an ultra, ultra low resolution video wall. 

Right.... Having covered all of that, we can now look at the specifics of what the server and layer channels are. 

Again, in its most basic form,  the server channel (and in most situations you are only really going to need one of them) handles all of the outputting. IE, what each dmx channel is doing, and so on. In real terms within the Eos under most circumstances, you can patch the server and forget about it. Other than ensuring that it's 'dimmer' value is at 100% whenever you want the 'Screen'  to be outputting something. You could think of it as a master output layer if you like.

So we have a master output control, and we now want to manipulate our video. We can assume that in most circumstances we will want to be able to transition between a couple of videos. If we are to play all the videos back on one layer, then switching between videos would have to be a snap to be the tidiest that you could make it on one layer. If you were to do a slow fade between say Folder 0 Video 1 and Folder 0 Video 26, then you would be snapping between the intervening 24 videos. Not good.

To alleviate that problem then, we use multiple layers. I generally patch four to six layers regardless of the media server i use and the project i am working on. Its pretty similar across all of the various flavours of media server. Virtual or otherwise.

Each layer can then have an intensity channel (or if you think about it in terms of Adobe Photoshop layers, then the dimmer could be viewed as an opacity level), and they can also have their own effects applied, as well as playback speeds, media, and so on. The uppermost layer being the top of them all. So layer Four has priority over layer Three, etc. Again, this is pretty standard across most, if not all media servers.

To smarten up those transitions then, we can now set up our media to be playing across a couple of layers, and so neatly fade between them. The advantage of using these layers is also that you can use two different sets of media, across two different layers, and merge the two together by playing with their dimmer (opacity) levels to create a nice new bit of media to all intents and purposes. 

Having done that, you then have two spare layers to do the same again (if you have patched four layers) and so now you can neatly transition between two different sets of effects over four layers.

So there (in a rather large nutshell) is a quick outline to Media Servers. Hopefully that helps explain things, and that i haven't confused you further.

Cheers

Smiffy 

Thanks very much for the reply!  This really helped a lot!

Just one more question: in the tutorial video the guy said that for virtual media servers you don't need to specify any addresses as you would for normal lights. Can you possibly explain why this is so?

If you are patching an external "real" media server, such as a Hippotiser, Mbox, Catalyst, Arkaos (etcetera etcetera), you do need an address - this is often on the Art-Net protocol as many of the media servers don't yet support ACN/sACN.

With the Eos/Ion virtual media server, the channel numbers are used to define "what to control" between the patch and pixelmaps. In other words, in Patch, you define channel 300 as a media server, and in the pixelmaps you tell a given pixelmap that its Server Channel is 300.

Hope that helps-

-luke-

Is there a way in Eos/Ion to get the virtual media server output to a projector instead of LED fixtures and walls?

zawistow,

The virtual media server in the Eos/Ion is meant to be DMX pixel mapping. It is very low res, and not meant for video. There are several companies that make really good media servers for video (and we can control them).

So, the simple answer to your question... Sorry, no.

`steve

zawistow,

The virtual media server in the Eos/Ion is meant to be DMX pixel mapping. It is very low res, and not meant for video. There are several companies that make really good media servers for video (and we can control them).

So, the simple answer to your question... Sorry, no.

`steve