2024 Projector Tool NDI Stream in Vision

[pfalvi]

Two issues:

 

1- it looks like I can only use one NDI stream into vision projectors, even if I have two active streams on the network. I can select the second one, but it doesn’t seem to let me output the second. Maybe a limit to only one active allowed somewhere?

(for clarity, I have two projectors, projector A is looking at a stream from stage 1 of Isadora, and projector B is looking at a stream from Stage 2 of Isadora. Both show content when I select the preview of them, but content only comes out of projector A when in the scene. Running a M2 Mac Mini and Vision 2024)

 

2- the ‘High Bandwidth’ version doesn’t seem to give me an increased resolution out of the projector, it seems to stay the same as the low bandwidth, content wise. This might be an issue somewhere else down the line, but I believe I have my settings set correctly.

 

Thanks for any help!

[klinzey]

Make sure your Video Source Input names are different on the 2 projectors.
In order to optimize rendering the same image on multiple screens, if the Source Input names are the same we shoe the same video.
If this does not resolve your issue please let us know.

Depending on the content of the stream high and low bandwidth can look very similar. The resolution may also be capped by the quality settings the Vision preferences dialogs.

[pfalvi]

Thanks for your response!

I did note to make sure that there are two different named streams, in both the Isadora output and the Video Source Inputs, but there’s a world where that bounced around as I was figuring it out. I’ll check back on that in the next couple of days.

 

2 hours ago, klinzey said:

Depending on the content of the stream high and low bandwidth can look very similar. The resolution may also be capped by the quality settings the Vision preferences dialogs.

I’ll look around vision preferences for this. I have seen the content on a separate monitor, and it isn’t as fuzzy as in Vision.

[bbudzon]

On 9/29/2023 at 12:22 PM, pfalvi said:

I’ll look around vision preferences for this. I have seen the content on a separate monitor, and it isn’t as fuzzy as in Vision.

The setting you are looking for is Surface Light Quality.

 

Normally, an NDI stream is played back as a texture on geometry using UVs. In this case, there is no beam or cast light. And so, selecting High Bandwidth will be immediately noticable. However, when an NDI stream is being cast as light out of a projector, there are other performance implications to consider. So, selecting High Bandwidth may not be enough to project a crisp clean image.

 

I would suggest trying to stick with Low Bandwidth and setting your Surface Light Quality to High. If this doesn't work, try bumping up to High Bandwidth. If this still doesn't work, you can increase the Surface Light Quality to Very High but this will use significantly more VRAM.

 

I hope this helps!

[pfalvi]

Months later I've finally had time to test it in a way I felt like I actually figured some things out. 

 

@bbudzonYou were absolutely right on the NDI quality setup, that gave me a very crisp and clean image like I wanted.

 

I still am having inconsistencies with using two NDI streams. I can consistently make one stream work, or one NDI stream and a webcam, but two NDI streams mostly did not work for me. I tried multiple computers, multiple sources, changing the names, everything I could think of. In maybe twenty tests, I made two individual streams work once.

 

When I put a second stream in, the second one goes black, even though when I'm assigning the stream it shows an accurate, live preview of what it's seeing on the NDI stream. 

Thanks!

[pfalvi]

And I think I just found the answer. Does Vision Plus only allow one NDI stream? 

[bbudzon]

I'm glad I was able to help!

 

To answer your other question, only Vision Unlimited has more than 1 NDI Stream. So, I bet that is the issue you are running into. You could reach out to our sales team if you'd like to upgrade. You may be able to get away with combining two videos on the media server side into a single NDI stream and cropping it back into two videos in Vision. But, it will degrade the stream quality and is generally not as easy to work with.