Create a VideoWall

Overview

Video wall creation usually consists of:

1. Preparing the content - usually by dividing it for multiple screens

2. Using software tools to distribute that content to the players

3. Configuring the players to render the content into a cohesive video wall

BrightSign software and hardware simplifies these tasks. This documentation describes the primary methods available to BrightSign customers to create video walls using our software and hardware. Select a method based on your BrightSign player(s) and the video assets you want to display:

Video Walls using XC5 Players

XC5 players can distribute video to up to four screens. All screens must be in either portrait or landscape orientation.

Manual/Legacy Video Wall Creation

VideoWall Link/Synchronization is a legacy method to create a video wall presentation with Series 3, 4, and 5 players in BrightAuthor:connected. This method is completely manual so it is unconstrained in terms of the number of screens and screen rotation.

Video Wall Bezel Compensation

See Configuring a Video Wall with Bezel Compensation to calculate the correct bezel compensation for your video wall.

General Video Wall Challenges

You should be aware of the following industry-wide hardware challenges when creating your video wall.

Display Screen Rows and Video Offset

If you have fast-moving content on a video wall which contains more than one row of screens, you may see offsets at the top and bottom boundaries of the screens in your video wall configuration. This is a result of the speed at which pixels are drawn/scanned on each screen (see the image below).

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This problem can only be fixed by using display screens that are capable of inverting the order of the scan and provide the ability to control frame offsets on the display screen. Some manufacturers call this scan inversion/frame control. LG is an example of a hardware manufacturer who provides features to mitigate this problem on video walls (see https://news.europedsl.com/lg-videowall-image-gap-reduction).

Synchronization Limitations

• Playback must be started simultaneously on all players.

• You must periodically re-synchronize to correct for sync drift over time.

• You must also attempt to synchronize output signal generation timing (known as "genlock" or "v-sync" synchronization).

• Downstream processing on players can result in out-of-sync playback, even if players are on the same frame, corrected for drift, and have the same redraw timing:

  • Display smoothing or scaling can result in a frame or redraw delay. To fix this, disable display processing if possible. Otherwise, ensure that all displays are set and connected identically.

  • Different display sets may have different timing if unlinked parallel processors are used for wall or tile processing.

Snapshot Lag

When taking a snapshot of an XC5 player, snapshots are captured one at a time from screen 1 to 4. This results in a frame offset of three to four frames between screen 1 and screen 4 since the offset increases by one frame of video between each screen.

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BrightSign-Specific Video Wall Limitations

• All BrightWall and presentation sets using enhanced synchronization that are connected to the same network must have unique domain values for each set.

  • This domain value can be found in the Presentation Settings > Support Content > Interactive (see the image below).

  • The domain value sets the communication “channel” between the leader and followers, and that communication generally is carried over the entire network via multicast PTP (Precision Time Protocol) packets. If there is more than one leader on the same domain, followers will jump back and forth between different points in their playback as they try to follow conflicting leader commands.

• Players in a sync configuration should be of the same model family. Mixing model families can work but is not recommended. For example, players in the XT4 family are similar enough to be used, but players with very different performance like XT4 and LS4 may yield inconsistent results.

• All media must strictly conform to supported specifications. Even media that is slightly out-of-spec may play back fine on its own but can cause issues with synchronized playback. For example, if the bitrate is too high, it may affect playback on one of the synchronized players.

• The leader player must have OS/firmware version that is the same or older than the follower players.

• Synchronization cannot be used simultaneously with roStreamQueue for seamless clip-to-clip transitions, so sync presentations that have a playlist including more than one video will have a slight pause between the videos.

• Seamless looping of a single video is supported with synchronized playback. The seamless looping requirements are:

  • Use an MP4 or MOV container

  • There must be no audio track, or SOWT (PCM little-endian) audio track

  • All tracks must be exactly the same length (including the sample length)

• We recommend using only one zone of video per player to ensure best results.