When we installed our video system last year, we admittedly didn’t think of everything we should have.  As a result, we were left with a large gap in our functionality.  This gap was basically the ability to run Keynote presentations into our HDSDI system smoothly.  Now we were able to do this, but not as well as it needed to be done.  See, we were using an HD interface from Blackmagic Design, which was great, except it wouldn’t allow OS X to use Core Image to send graphics across the HDSDI channel.  As a result, we had a NASTY 4-5 second lag every time we changed slides.  Worse yet, we had no ability to to any smooth transitions or builds of any kind.

Fast-forward 9 months to this past September.  Things have calmed down, and it’s now time to try and resolve this issue without killing our budget.  Basically the solution is to convert the DVI signal from our Mac’s dual-head card to HDSDI, and add sync to it so that we can run it through our live switcher.  I’ve found only 2 products so far that can do this:  The Miranda DVI-RAMP, which we tested 2 weekends ago, and the Matrox MXO, which we tested this weekend.

Both systems did a great job of converting DVI to HDSDI.  The DVI-RAMP has some features on it that we don’t really need at this time, but everything it advertises it performs very well.  The Matrox isn’t as loaded up as the DVI-RAMP, but it also costs about 80% less and still is enough to do what we need.  Our Keynote operator was blown away by how responsive her computer was this morning during the first test.  To add to that, this morning’s message included a LOT of graphic elements that changed much quicker than normal.  It’s safe to say that having this component in place actually improved the morning from a presentation standpoint.

I’m hoping that the evaluation of the MXO comes back positive so that we might be able to hang on to the one we have.  Currently we have it strictly on a trial basis. 

There’s a few other places we could use equipment like this in the control room…

• On CG:  We could finally upgrade to the newest version of Pro Presenter and use their Extended Resolution plugin to output our lyrics over DVI at 1920×1080.
• On Playback:  We could quit using the Blackmagic Deck Control to play back our videos and again, use Pro Presenter with the ER plugin to give us one-click playback of our clips.
• Combined with some BTX/Gefen hardware:  We could put just about any signal we wanted to across our HDSDI framework and get it to wherever it needs to go.

So as you can imagine, I’m pretty stoked.  Being able to add a lot of functionality for a relatively low amount of cash is great, but when you can make life easier for your volunteers at the same time, it’s REALLY a win.  I’ll come back to this subject later as our evaluation continues.