# Mapping Five projectors to a single computer



## Thatjackofalltrades (Sep 4, 2017)

Hello Control Booth

I am working on a production of Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on The Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart by Caridad Svich, and I'm running into a bit of a problem. The setup I am trying to achieve has four projectors beaming on to scrim cones with an additional projector running to a back screen. 

The two problems: I am using SCS 11 to run the projectors but have been having problems actually connecting all five. At the moment an ethernet cable runs from the booth through the ceiling and down into the space (it's a black box). As it stands this ethernet goes into a converter and comes out VGA which runs into the one projector that goes to the back screen.

Can I use this Ethernet to run to five? 

If so How?

Once that is handled what will need to be done to the video signal to prepare it for the curved surface it will be projected on?

Thanks so much for all your help.


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## Jay Ashworth (Sep 4, 2017)

It's not ethernet. It's just Cat5, and no, you can't run more than one projector on it.

You're going to need a graphics interface *for each projector* -- and 5 screens is not easy to configure for; this is fourth-year stuff. 

You'll need to add 2 dual-HDMI output cards to the PC itself, assuming they don't shut off the internal VGA... if they do and you can't stop it, you'll need a third card.

And will SCS *handle* 5 screens?


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## Thatjackofalltrades (Sep 4, 2017)

I'm pretty sure that'll max it out but it will do it if I use screen 1 as a duplicate. Can I split the Cat with an amplifier? If not what would those graphics interfaces look like? I am a fourth year so that works out just about right. Also why would be using HDMI it's all VGA?


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## Jay Ashworth (Sep 4, 2017)

Projectors these days tend to take HDMI, and you're probably better off there, but I don't particularly care what VGA cards you're using as long as you can *reliably* stick 2 (3) of them in the same chassis and have the drivers address them all.

That's rocket science, is all I'm saying.


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## Thatjackofalltrades (Sep 4, 2017)

I'm using some older Epison 822+ and 83+ models. They do not have HDMI.


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## dbaxter (Sep 4, 2017)

For a production at Blackfriars, we needed 2 main projectors and then 4 more video outs for stage mounted monitors. Here's a clip. The software used was Cue Player Premium Plus (disclaimer: my company's) with a total of 3 computers linked via the theater's network. One in the booth doing the cues, sound, and the projectors, and then two backstage hardwired to the monitors, but controlled from the booth. So it can be done, but as Jay notes - it isn't for sissies.


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## techieman33 (Sep 4, 2017)

Your going to need separate video outputs for each image. If some or all of the projectors to the cones are going to display the same image then that will only count as one output. Just get a splitter and send the same image to each projector that way. I've never seen anyone send multiple video outputs over a single cable for something like this. Sure it's possible, but it's also going to be very expensive and complicated. How long are your cable runs from the computer to the projectors? If it's under 50 feet you would probably be fine just running VGA cables out of the computer to the projectors. 50-100 feet then you'll probably want to get a VGA amplifier. VGA cables and amps are dirt cheap, and you could probably rent them from a local A/V company for next to nothing since they probably have boxes of the things just sitting around collecting dust. If your going longer than that then you need to start looking into extenders that will run that signal over CAT5, CAT6, SDI, etc. And those will require a dedicated cable from one end of the extender to the other. Again something that would probably be cheaper to rent than to buy if your only going to need it for a short run. 




Jay Ashworth said:


> It's not ethernet. It's just Cat5, and no, you can't run more than one projector on it.
> 
> You're going to need a graphics interface *for each projector* -- and 5 screens is not easy to configure for; this is fourth-year stuff.
> 
> ...



You need to slow down. Some of the stuff your saying just plain isn't true. And on other things you are making lots of assumptions as to what the OP is doing and what hardware they have.


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## Amiers (Sep 4, 2017)

So....

All you have is one Cat5 cable nothing else? 
I would say if that setup works with one projector then mimic that to get everything cabled up. 

Next let's talk about your computer. How old is it what's under the hood?

You could slap in some Gfx cards but can the computer handle it. 

An alternative would be to buy two of these gems. http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/displayport/
And 
1 GFXcard with two displays out. 


Third options would be to grab some of these
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005G306I2/?tag=controlbooth-20
And 
this however adds a new issue with how well your computer can process USB and if you have enough slots. 
Possibly adding in a USB PCI card to facilitate the amount. Running off a USB hub will not work and things will drop due to power issues. 

There are lots of options but all takes money. This doesn't include setting up software to actually getting it running. 

@MNicolai lives close maybe he could give you some hands on advice.


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## MNicolai (Sep 5, 2017)

Some questions:

Are you sending the same content to each projector or unique content to each?
How many unique video feeds do you need between all of the projectors?
What is your budget, if any, for rentals/purchases?
Is it possible with the layout of the stage that you hit all of the cones from a single, larger projector, rather projector-per-cone? (this would simplify your cabling, interfaces, consistency of color/brightness between images)
Have you rigged this up to establish proof of concept that this will be bright enough once stage lights are on? (many VGA projectors left kicking around these days have enough hours on them that they don't put out the same brightness they did when they were freshly purchased)
Once you know how to get the requisite number of video feeds out of a computer for this, you'll want to mock it up with LCD monitors and make sure when you start running cues with similar quality content that SCS, your computer, and your hard drive can handle that amount of processing without and latency or freeze ups.

If this gig is in the SRQ area, you also may want to tie in w/ Asolo Rep. They just did a show with several projectors and may be willing to rent their gear out to an area theater for not much money.


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## venuetech (Sep 5, 2017)

The good news is that you can use that cat5 cable, the bad news is, you will use it as a pull string for 5 new runs.


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## Thatjackofalltrades (Sep 5, 2017)

To respond to MNicolai first just because he had my most the direct questions and then I'll put up some more of my thoughts. 


MNicolai said:


> Are you sending the same content to each projector or unique content to each?



No I am thinking I will be able to run four signals into the space. One is already in from the Cat5 and I think I'm going to leave it alone. I'm considering just running it through the door or the window frame because the ceiling space is awful and I don't know how the faculty will feel about doing new runs. Basically one would be higher quality on a flat back screen. The four cones would be the new runs.


MNicolai said:


> How many unique video feeds do you need between all of the projectors?


 
I would then need four distinct signals. I could probably do it with three. One back screen two for the cones being mirror on each side although that would present the problem of how can I basically schedule them so that the paired couplings wouldn't always be on. I probably could just bleed it out, but that would seem sloppy to me. 


MNicolai said:


> What is your budget, if any, for rentals/purchases?



At the moment I have $400 to prove this concept. I should be able to just hook into to two. The entire show has to cost about $1500 max not including what is purchased in this $400. There's a lot of other things that that has to cover, but some more of it should be able to be allocated for it. 


MNicolai said:


> Is it possible with the layout of the stage that you hit all of the cones from a single, larger projector, rather projector-per-cone? (this would simplify your cabling, interfaces, consistency of color/brightness between images)



I don't have the space angle for that. I'm in a forty by thirty foot black box.


MNicolai said:


> Have you rigged this up to establish proof of concept that this will be bright enough once stage lights are on? (many VGA projectors left kicking around these days have enough hours on them that they don't put out the same brightness they did when they were freshly purchased)



Luckily I am not the one who is charged with projector maintenance and none of it will come out of my budget (you have to love some of the work arounds that the Educational system provides). I haven't done this proof yet but it should be able to be seen as long as my light designer and I are conscious of it (luckily we have enough lights to be super directionally conscious)


MNicolai said:


> If this gig is in the SRQ area, you also may want to tie in w/ Asolo Rep. They just did a show with several projectors and may be willing to rent their gear out to an area theater for not much money.



I did not know this. I'm at New College so I certainly should be able to talk with them. 

Sorry I just wanted to continue that conversation now for some questions for others.


Amiers said:


> Next let's talk about your computer. How old is it what's under the hood?
> 
> You could slap in some Gfx cards but can the computer handle it.



The two I might be using (depending on how I am running the cabling) are either a windows Dell laptop that's about two years old. I don't know quite enough to tell straight off if I can do this so if you can provide maybe some resources there that would be amazing. 


Amiers said:


> An alternative would be to buy two of these gems. http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/displayport/
> And
> 1 GFXcard with two displays out.



I've seen these and they confuse me a little especially with the VGA capability so if you can speak to that, that would be amazing. Also the Three to go wouldn't it have three out? Are they chainable? Do they use your graphics card or do they add some power. Also would I be able to run basically three different screens? I'm a little confused on the capability and actual usage. 


techieman33 said:


> 50-100 feet then you'll probably want to get a VGA amplifier.



Would these be for each line or is there some type of signal booster that can take different 1to1 lines and boost them all?


venuetech said:


> he good news is that you can use that cat5 cable, the bad news is, you will use it as a pull string for 5 new runs.



I actually had this thought. How practical is this?

Just for some more thoughts and specifics that might help facilitate this conversation further. I have been thinking about the TripleHead2Go although I'm not sure what the efficacy will be and at that price point at the moment it has to be a godsend. I'm thinking either I will run VGA split four ways with one feed and do massive restaging leaving the fifth alone, and going up from there using mirrored pairs depending on how many feeds I can possibly run out.


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## Amiers (Sep 5, 2017)

If you are running 5 videos from a laptop it better be the best 2015 money can buy.

I can't give you resources if you can't tell me what kind of laptop you are even running. I don't mind helping out but it seems like you are asking us to do this for you outside of hooking it up. 

Hit the google and do a bit of research. 

As far as the TripleHead2Go it takes one output and turns it into three.


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## MNicolai (Sep 5, 2017)

Forgive me for bowing out of this thread just after I popped in. I'm prepping to grab the dogs and either 1) GTFO of dodge or 2) hunker down on high(ish) ground.


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## Morte615 (Sep 5, 2017)

@MNicolai Be Safe, It looks like my Girlfriend is on Ride Out Crew at Disney so I'm staying close by.


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## MNicolai (Sep 5, 2017)

Likewise to you and your girlfriend. Was hoping to get up to mouse this weekend to see the Moana on Ice show my friend's been slaving away at but that would be tempting fate at this point.

Already got long lines for gas and increasingly empty shelves at grocery stores here in SRQ. We're not down to the vegan food and single-ply though so no full-on panic mode quite yet.


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## Thatjackofalltrades (Sep 5, 2017)

No honestly I have a plan I just need to commit and I can't find two sources that agree with each other 100% and I can't afford to be wrong. I just had to decide between using ab Hp Compau 720 elite (I know trust me but it's my booth computer so the audio is already wired in and it will definitely have the one back projector on it) and then add additional Video Cards or run it off of an Inspiron 7558 with an Intel Core TM i7-5500U CPU with 6 gigs of ram and using a TripleHead2Go.


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## Thatjackofalltrades (Sep 5, 2017)

Stay safe my new florida friends. It's going to get hairy it looks like.


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## Amiers (Sep 5, 2017)

If they are both laptops you can stick a GFX card in them you will have to go with TH2G. 

For 400$ you will be hard pressed to purchase the cabling and the TH2G x 2. Look to renting.


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## Jay Ashworth (Sep 5, 2017)

techieman33 said:


> Your going to need separate video outputs for each image. If some or all of the projectors to the cones are going to display the same image then that will only count as one output. Just get a splitter and send the same image to each projector that way. I've never seen anyone send multiple video outputs over a single cable for something like this. Sure it's possible, but it's also going to be very expensive and complicated. How long are your cable runs from the computer to the projectors? If it's under 50 feet you would probably be fine just running VGA cables out of the computer to the projectors. 50-100 feet then you'll probably want to get a VGA amplifier. VGA cables and amps are dirt cheap, and you could probably rent them from a local A/V company for next to nothing since they probably have boxes of the things just sitting around collecting dust. If your going longer than that then you need to start looking into extenders that will run that signal over CAT5, CAT6, SDI, etc. And those will require a dedicated cable from one end of the extender to the other. Again something that would probably be cheaper to rent than to buy if your only going to need it for a short run.
> 
> You need to slow down. Some of the stuff your saying just plain isn't true. And on other things you are making lots of assumptions as to what the OP is doing and what hardware they have.



"Just plain isn't true"?

Please, expand.

Fact is, we may both be wrong. It occurred to me in the interim that the OP may need *the same image on 5 projectors*... which is obviously much simpler. And he didn't say, and I didn't catch it.

[edit:] and I hadn't caught up on the thread before posting that. 5 signals. In a blackbox. On a 2 year old Dell.

I wouldn't even try to *do* that; I definitely can't help someone who doesn't know the playing field do it, by remote control no less. You're right; I'm out.


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## techieman33 (Sep 6, 2017)

Jay Ashworth said:


> "Just plain isn't true"?
> 
> Please, expand.
> 
> ...



You can buy cards that will support 6 monitors for under $200, and Matrox offers one that will do 9 it's $1800 though. Stuff like that is pretty common for day traders. And that's at 1080p or higher. 

VGA is still pretty common on even modern projectors these days, and still on a lot computers. When we do events we usually run both HDMI and VGA cables to the projector and have adaptors standing by for the various flavors of HDMI and display port. And it ends up being a pretty even split of which cable we end up using. 

There are also systems that will carry video over IP, it's not something your likely to find in a theater but you never know.


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## Jay Ashworth (Sep 6, 2017)

Sure there are. But those weren't what the gent had already, from his description, and they're probably not germane in a 1200ft blackbox anyway.

VGA is a generic enough term for PC video output that I'm not gonna feel too bad either way on that one. 

And 6 port cards are *that cheap* now? Last time I looked, they were still $600+, and that was months ago, not years. You got a link?


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## Jay Ashworth (Sep 6, 2017)

Something like this was the closest hit I've seen:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009S2F268/?tag=controlbooth-20


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## techieman33 (Sep 6, 2017)

Keepa shows that this card has been on amazon since fall of 2013 and supports 6 mini display port outputs. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C7EPSVS/?tag=controlbooth-20


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## Amiers (Sep 6, 2017)

Jay Ashworth said:


> Something like this was the closest hit I've seen:
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009S2F268/?tag=controlbooth-20




techieman33 said:


> Keepa shows that this card has been on amazon since fall of 2013 and supports 6 mini display port outputs. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C7EPSVS/?tag=controlbooth-20



Op is running laptops. 

Those cards if you read the reviews are a PITA to set up as well as saying adapters blowing if not configured properly. He would hit his budget in adapters alone.


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## Craig Hauber (Sep 7, 2017)

Thatjackofalltrades said:


> No honestly I have a plan I just need to commit and I can't find two sources that agree with each other 100% and I can't afford to be wrong. I just had to decide between using ab Hp Compau 720 elite (I know trust me but it's my booth computer so the audio is already wired in and it will definitely have the one back projector on it) and then add additional Video Cards or run it off of an Inspiron 7558 with an Intel Core TM i7-5500U CPU with 6 gigs of ram and using a TripleHead2Go.



When running on nonexistent budget, I've done such things as this by just collecting as many loaner older computers -mostly desktops and just ran one computer per projector using long VGA cables. 

You could probably scour eBay and find some cheap VGA extender "Balun" sets to use cat-5 instead. 

Yes it gets hairy in the booth co-ordinating multiple machines but it saves thousands in rental costs that many small theaters don't have. They usually have an abundance of volunteers so multiple computer operators in addition to the usual sound/light techs is more easier to attain.

I've even gone so far as to use open-source slide presentation software on Linux machines and home-made string & pulley "dousers" to black-out projectors (multiple projectors on single surface -black one out and open another -then change media on the blacked-out one for next cue)

Usually around school & church groups finding projectors and old computers isn't an issue, but finding pro-grade switchers, scalers and software is!


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## MNicolai (Sep 7, 2017)

Craig Hauber said:


> Yes it gets hairy in the booth co-ordinating multiple machines but it saves thousands in rental costs that many small theaters don't have. They usually have an abundance of volunteers so multiple computer operators in addition to the usual sound/light techs is more easier to attain.



I'm not familiar with SCS and its capabilities but for people who have access to a few Mac Mini's, you can rent multiple Qlab licenses for dirt cheap and go Mini-per-output with Qlab running on each machine, with one Mini that has the master cue list to control the other Qlab instances running on the additional workstations. Crude, and not ideal, but effective. Also pretty easy to park the Mac Mini's right next to each projector so you minimize cabling.

The primary problem here is budget. You could spend $400 just on cables for something like this. Much less sourcing the hardware needed to drive the system or rights to any stock content you may need to hijack and customize. And if you need to buy cables, adapters, or hardware, investing any money in VGA will be a sunk cost. You'll never achieve an ROI and it won't be long before those projectors start dying off and get replaced by HDMI or native HDBT projectors.

Calling in favors is probably a better way to go, and might hook you up with a system that provides more appropriate, professional experience for a college environment.


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## domiii (Sep 7, 2017)

Not to muddy the waters with another suggestion, but this is what I've done in the past is this and it works.

Put the video computer (or two) on the stage connected to your network (using that cat 5 cable you have from the booth). Use that for your projections. Then have your sound booth computer (on the same network) control the video computers using MIDI.

SCS has to be on all computers and, that is the program that controls it all. SCS is capable of MIDI, Telnet and now DMX control. There are free virtual MIDI over Ethernet drivers available for PC and I think Mac. It is a little tricky to set up, but once setup, it works like a charm especially with a wired network connection.

We used this method for two video projections for the play 'A Piece of My Heart'. We have a small lighting/sound/box-office and prefer to use one tech to run sound and lights. We run everything from the 'go' button on the lighting board (ETC Express 48/96). 

if you are interested, let me know and I can give more details if you need them.


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