mattw Posted October 20, 2013 Share Posted October 20, 2013 I have never been involved in A/V but am considering creating some basic video content for my gigs, just logos over some VJ content for the club type work I do. What makes a media server a media server? Can I stick a graphics card in an old Dell Poweredge server I have and call it a media server. What should I look for in a graphics card? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timsabre Posted October 20, 2013 Share Posted October 20, 2013 What makes a media server a media server? Being able to output a variety of media clips on demand, I would say, which involves hardware and software. Most media servers can manipulate the media in real time as well and are remotely controllable by DMX, MIDI etc. What are you displaying on? What resolution do you need to display?Resolume is a nifty bit of software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattw Posted October 21, 2013 Author Share Posted October 21, 2013 Being able to output a variety of media clips on demand, I would say, which involves hardware and software. Most media servers can manipulate the media in real time as well and are remotely controllable by DMX, MIDI etc. What are you displaying on? What resolution do you need to display?Resolume is a nifty bit of software. Yes I have looked at Resolume with the idea of being able to control it from Chamsys on a networked computer. Display will be normally TV's installed in a venue of various sizes as well as projectors. I am not sure what resolution I will need as I am still very new to this. Is there an accepted minimum? Thanks for the help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timsabre Posted October 21, 2013 Share Posted October 21, 2013 Is there an accepted minimum?No, but at some point it will start looking bad/blocky. For VJ visualisation type things you can get fairly blocky without it really mattering, but once you start trying to do logos and graphics then it does show.The reason I asked is that the higher the resolution you want to output, the beefier the computer you need to do it smoothly. So you need to decide some things about how you are going to do it... you've got all these display devices, are they all showing the same thing? How are they connected, VGA, composite video, DVI? often in a venue everything will be driven off a video splitter with just one input. If you want different screens to show different things, then you really will need a decent computer with multiple graphics cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shez Posted October 21, 2013 Share Posted October 21, 2013 What should I look for in a graphics card?Once you've decided what software you want to use, go for the graphics card that they recommend. It's not much good to buy a card first and find that it's not supported by your newly purchased software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattw Posted October 21, 2013 Author Share Posted October 21, 2013 So you need to decide some things about how you are going to do it... you've got all these display devices, are they all showing the same thing? How are they connected, VGA, composite video, DVI? often in a venue everything will be driven off a video splitter with just one input. If you want different screens to show different things, then you really will need a decent computer with multiple graphics cards. It will just be one output showing the same thing. I think the server has a core2duo cpu with 4gb of ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timsabre Posted October 21, 2013 Share Posted October 21, 2013 If you just need to play videos, anything would do. If you want to run Resolume and overlay different layers and stuff like that, you'll need something a bit more poky. Shez is right, decide on what software you're going to use then get hardware to match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattw Posted October 21, 2013 Author Share Posted October 21, 2013 Ok, thanks for your input it is food for thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timsabre Posted October 21, 2013 Share Posted October 21, 2013 You could just stick the demo version of Resolume on it and see what happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason5d Posted October 25, 2013 Share Posted October 25, 2013 I use various equipment for vjing. for your needs I suggest a good laptop with good graphics (I use a macbook pro) withvj software - modul8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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