Hello lovely ETC people:
I searched back a couple of pages and couldn't see anything that struck me as an obvious 'thoughts' thread, so apologies now if there is and i missed it.
Anyway, thanks to Luke in the London office, i headed into 'The Playhouse' the other day for a play with the latest software along with pixel mapping and the Virtual Media Server.
I have to say that i liked it a lot, and really could have used it at Ferrari World a few months back. There's just the job for it in one of the attractions, although not sure whether the pixel map would have hit the limits in trying to play across the LED screen that's in there!
So, thoughts....
Overall, i felt that the virtual media server is perfectly pitched. It's certainly not a full on Media Server, and so the likes of Green Hippo, et-al wouldn't be feeling threatened by it, however it does fill a nice niche in that the majority of productions don't need all of the functionality of a Hippotizer.
Pixel Mapping, Layer and Server Patching, and so on are all pretty straightforward, and the system operates in a pretty similar manner to most other media servers and so there isn't really any issue about having to learn yet another set of functionality.
I would quite like to see the Mac version of the pixel install thingamyjig. But no rush :)
Additionally, i would like to be able to see a per layer preview rather than just the master out. In my ideal world, that would also be something that could be visible on my Macbook screen so that i can see it all the time and leave the main monitors on the console for everything else. Whether that's as another app or as a part of the Eos Offline in mirror mode i'm not particularly fussy. Although at this stage i cannot remember whether i can choose separate views on a mirror mode Eos Offline to that which are on the main console. It's been a while since i had the macbook as a mirror rather than a client.
So. All in all, i think that the VMS is a useful and valuable tool, that does what it says on the tin. Very pleased with it.
Cheers
Smiffy