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sinc747  
#1 Posted : Thursday, September 24, 2015 12:57:46 AM(UTC)
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As a vMix Reseller, I have two ongoing clients that use vMix to power large LED screens in arenas, gymnasiums and stadiums. Sometimes it just for a scoreboard. Other times for a video screen showing replays of action on the court/ice/field, etc. Still other times they output still images to multiple video screens throughout the venue or score overlays to the in-house TV system for inclusion in their broadcast.

In some instances they could use 6 or 7 outputs.

Could this be added possibly as a vMix Pro level feature?

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jhebbel on 2/10/2016(UTC)
richardgatarski  
#2 Posted : Thursday, September 24, 2015 5:33:41 AM(UTC)
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+1
That would be nice :)

Graphics cards tend to have much more than two display outputs nowadays, and we kind of prefer Fullscreen to External (less delay, no need for extra video out cards). So for us Fullscreen is better, if which type of Output is a question.
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sinc747 on 2/10/2016(UTC), jhebbel on 2/10/2016(UTC)
sinc747  
#3 Posted : Wednesday, December 9, 2015 12:19:18 AM(UTC)
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Worked with another client last week that needs 6 or more external outputs. Any word if this is being considered or should I look elsewhere?
sinc747  
#4 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 2:19:20 AM(UTC)
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Working with another client that needs 5+ outputs.

I think there is a legitimate need here.

- Tom
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jhebbel on 2/10/2016(UTC)
jhebbel  
#5 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 7:53:50 AM(UTC)
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I absolutely 100% agree!!!! The number used now (2) seems to be an arbitrary number as WPF can handle many many more outputs and they seem to have little to no impact on my GPU or CPU. I hope they remove the arbitrary cap and instead make it a dynamic list that can be added to or removed at will.

Regardless, with the arrival of NDI in the foreseeable future I have already decided to develop my own workaround as I too need more outputs, though my purposes are for more (and more configurable) preview monitors as I like to run my productions directly from the full screen displays and not the program window.
ovinas  
#6 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 10:30:10 AM(UTC)
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Do you really need 5 or 6 different outputs?
admin  
#7 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 11:20:58 AM(UTC)
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Hi,

If the outputs will be showing the same thing, use a splitter or HDMI matrix switcher on one of the graphics outputs.
Reason being each additional output adds significant load on the GPU.

It is extremely difficult to ensure smooth video across multiple monitors, 3 seems to be the reasonable limit
for good performance. It took a lot of research and testing just to be able to support two fullscreen outputs!

(By the way, we don't use "WPF", we render directly with Direct3D)

Regards,

Martin
vMix
jhebbel  
#8 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 1:39:44 PM(UTC)
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admin wrote:
Hi,

If the outputs will be showing the same thing, use a splitter or HDMI matrix switcher on one of the graphics outputs.
Reason being each additional output adds significant load on the GPU.

It is extremely difficult to ensure smooth video across multiple monitors, 3 seems to be the reasonable limit
for good performance. It took a lot of research and testing just to be able to support two fullscreen outputs!

(By the way, we don't use "WPF", we render directly with Direct3D)

Regards,

Martin
vMix

Ahh, sniffer was picking up controls from the system.windows.controls namespace.
I hardly see any CPU bump when going from program window to enabling the 2 fullscreen outputs (actually I see none), not sure what the leap is to 4+ as I cannot test but I would assume it to be linear in proportion. This is why I think a non arbitrary cap would be nice, those of us with more powerful systems should not be gated because of other systems.

Direct 3D rendering can be tricky, as someone who primarily develops games these days I know from experience, not sure what library you are using or if its a homebrew, but some absolutely are better than others as D3D relies heavily on the interfacing library to handle resources and threading. Perhaps a glance at OpenGL is worthwhile as when applications are coded explicitly with OpenGL in mind they have been proven to be many times faster than D3D.

Skipping the direct frame writing and outputting of frames to device and looking at an alternative using custom D3D (or existing ones) controls in a WPF wrapper is also worth considering as WPF already leverages GPU for rendering and FPC's related to such. Also would make threading much easier.
jhebbel  
#9 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 1:43:08 PM(UTC)
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ovinas wrote:
Do you really need 5 or 6 different outputs?

Need, no. Would it be useful and preferred especially if you plan to operate off the full screen previews and not the application window, then yes.

I would like at least 4, 2 input pools, 1 program out and 1 preview out, I can split the output from there.
jhebbel  
#10 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 2:08:45 PM(UTC)
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admin wrote:
Hi,

If the outputs will be showing the same thing, use a splitter or HDMI matrix switcher on one of the graphics outputs.
Reason being each additional output adds significant load on the GPU.

It is extremely difficult to ensure smooth video across multiple monitors, 3 seems to be the reasonable limit
for good performance. It took a lot of research and testing just to be able to support two fullscreen outputs!

(By the way, we don't use "WPF", we render directly with Direct3D)

Regards,

Martin
vMix


An amendment to my previous comment, I realize that you said you use D3D and I mistakenly checked my CPU during enabling and disabling full screen and I just checked again but while keeping an eye on my GPU stats and discovered something curious/disturbing.

As i'm sure you are aware most GPUs have a variable clock, It would appear that either the library you are using for your D3D is overriding the GPUs clock (not unheard of, applications like Adobe lock the clock to ensure max performance) or the clock is being miscalculated based on the programs use and SHOULD be locked.

My PCs GPU idles at around 325mhz, When I launch vMix and add a few videos and inputs my GPU rightfully locks at 3gHz keeping my load nice and low so video is smooth (4 cameras put me at 3-4% load) However, and here's the problem, and part of the reason why you are seeing bad benchmark data when writing for fullscreen outputs; When I enable full screen, my clock then drops back to 324mhz causing the GPU Load to increase (now somewhere in the range of 33% for the same 4 cameras)! I can manually lock my GPU clock back to 3gHz using a GPU utility I have and my load drops back down to 3%-4% load with both full screen outputs on.

So something is definitely amiss.
thecloudmediagroup  
#11 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 4:56:27 PM(UTC)
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Correct me if I am wrong Martin,

With the NDI protocol being used in vMix 17, could you not from a central vMix machine output 6 different NDI feeds to 6 separate vMix computers and output each feed to each computer's Fullscreen?
jhebbel  
#12 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 5:07:39 PM(UTC)
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Wouldn't necessarily need 6 computers, but NDI certainly opens a lot of possibilities, I just received my NDI SDK this morning (they have been experiencing server issues) and the NDI protocol and framework is extremely well written and imposes very little overhead, I see this protocol opening up a lot of output capabilities and intend to write some of my own software to fill some issues I had with limited outputs as well. I just can't wait to get my hands on vmix 17 to fully test its capabilities.
admin  
#13 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 10:36:44 PM(UTC)
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Hi jhebbel,

I know you mean well, but sadly the information you have provided is not a solution to the fullscreen limits.
Performance of the GPU processing itself is not the issue here, but rather being able to accurately time each frame for display.
Frame timing cant be done accurately at high GPU load, so even if it is says only 30% is in use, that doesn't mean you can triple the number if displays, it just doesn't work like that.

Also, the reduced GPU clock is due to power management in the NVIDIA driver and is normal, if the driver thinks it can render consistently at a lower clock it will and it is fine.

OpenGL is also definitely not faster, at least not under Windows 10.

Regards,

Martin
vMix
admin  
#14 Posted : Wednesday, February 10, 2016 10:38:40 PM(UTC)
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Also, with regards to NDI, the same limitations apply, it doesn't improve the performance of the PC, just allows connectivity over
the network instead of HDMI or SDI.

So it is not going to be able to expand the number of unique outputs because the same GPU limits apply. Also there is a small amount of CPU usage
needed for each NDI session, so keep that in mind.

Regards,

Martin
vMix
jhebbel  
#15 Posted : Thursday, February 11, 2016 7:08:41 AM(UTC)
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So 2 fullscreen outputs loaded with shots and inputs going to 2 monitors is the maximum GPUs can handle even though it shows I'm only at 4% load (after I lock the core)? My setup is only a quad core i5 and a 660 GPU so i'm hardly at the high end of the spectrum as far as equipment goes.
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