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Overview
Video wall creation usually consists of:
- Preparing the content - usually by dividing it for multiple screens
- Using software tools to distribute that content to the players
- 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.
You cannot use BrightWall video creation methods if you are using standalone publishing, because you must be connected to a network (additional configuration is required after publishing the presentation).
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.
Industry-wide Video Wall Challenges
Though BrightSign makes it easy to create video walls, there are some general hardware challenges that you should be aware of.
Refresh Rates
When distributing content across more than one row of screens (starting with 1x2 screens), the rate of refresh at the intersection of the top and bottom screen differs by one video frame. This creates a one frame offset where the bottom of Screen 1 meets the top of Screen 2 (see the image below).
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)
- All BrightWall and presentation sets using Enhanced Synchronization that are connected to the same network must have unique domain values for each set. 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 Master on the same Domain, the Slaves will get confused and jump back and forth between different points in their playback as they try to follow conflicting Master commands. - Players in a sync configuration should be of the same model family. Mixed model families can work but we do not recommend that.
- All media must strictly conform to supported specifications – even slightly out-of-spec media that appears to play back fine on its own can cause issues with synchronized playback.
- The leader (Screen 1 for BrightWall) player must have OS/firmware version same or older than the follower players.
- Synchronization cannot be used simultaneously with roStreamQueue for seamless clip-to-clip transition, 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, subject to the seamless looping requirements
- MP4 or MOV container
- No audio track, or SOWT (PCM little-endian) audio track
- All tracks must be exactly the same length down to sample
- Attempting to play more than one synchronized video at a time via BrightAuthor is not recommended – odd/unexpected behavior can occur
Snapshots
When taking a snapshot of an XC5 player, this offset is exaggerated in the snapshot by one frame of video between each screen, from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4. This results in a frame offset of 3 to 4 frames between Screen 1 and Screen 4. This is because the snapshots are captured one at a time in a sequence from Screen 1 to 4.
