Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Ads server

This is topic Ads server in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=000964

Posted by Nils Hoover (Member # 6636) on 11-25-2011, 01:01 PM:

I work for a small arts/independent movie theater. We show ads and shorts as part of a preshow, so having both video and audio is important (as opposed to just slides)

As always, cost is an issue, but so is quality and useability, trying to find a balance between all of those.

I am trying to create a computer to play ads off of, we have 5 screens, and right now we play shorts/ads off of 5 seprate WD TV media players. They are cheap and unreliable, on top of the fact that is is really annoying to have to render out files and transfer it to each one individually.

My plan is to use proshow producer or some such program, output it to a 5 way hdmi splitter to each separate projector, and possibly use a HDMI over cat-6 converter (have to run the cable a long distance, cat-6 is way cheaper than HDMI or dvi cables).

-what type of video card should I consider to output the HDMI? Other hardware on the computer I am not thinking about?
-is this a silly way of doing this?

Is there a reason I need to buy something like this from Hail research technologies @$120 each
vs some of these @$10 each from Monoprice ?

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-25-2011, 01:24 PM:

It depends on what kind of projector you are feeding but I would say plan for the future and the future is of course digital. I just went though this with a new location-installation and the best route was to go with a card that has an SDI out on it into a SDI distribution amp. The video card with SDI output is the single costly item involved in doing this. This will allow up to HD rez with 10 bit color. All digital projectors allow for this input to be configured and the result was very good and it will carry them well into the future. I know that you can go in excess of 500 feet with a single SDI coax comming off a DA amp.

Mark

Posted by Nils Hoover (Member # 6636) on 11-25-2011, 01:32 PM:

Sorry, I should have specified the projectors. These are just little crappy WXGA projectors we got specifically for playing ads. They don't have SDI inputs on them (HDMI, VGA, Component and Composite). And as much as I agree to plan for the future, I am not sure that the budget of this project can include it as much as it probably should.

Although I may be trying to put together an E-Cinema server of sorts at some point, and SDI for that seems like would be the proper way to go, but that is its own separate post for sure.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 11-29-2011, 06:15 AM:

I may be missing something, but why use HDMI? There are lots of VGA distribution systems. You don't need sound as well on the video cable - the main advantage of HDMI.

HDMI over CAT5/6 is possible. You noticed there are two ways to do it - passive and active. Passive just uses the CAT5/6 cable instead of actual HDMI cable. This rarely works well, you have to use the fairly rare STP CAT6 cable (not UTP) if you want it to work very far at all... and good luck over 30 feet or so.
The HDMI specification only allows close connections, with cable length limited to 14 feet. Longer cables might work but it gets dicey - and cable that will actually work at extended lengths is extremely expensive. Don't expect that STP CAT6 is equal to the superior quality HDMI cable needed for long runs.
Note that you can buy all sorts of very long HDMI cables and extenders, and you might find guaranteed ones (this means you can get your money back when it doesn't work).
I haven't seen good 1080p results from any HDMI cable over 44 feet, and that good 44 foot one cost well over $300.00. I tried a passive "dual CAT5/6" extender and it failed totally, no sound or picture with 50' STP CAT6 cables. With WXGA you may have better results.
Active extenders do work but good ones are expensive. If you really need to use HDMI over a long run, an active extender is the only solution.

But I don't think you need HDMI. VGA extenders using CAT5 are very cheap compared to any decent active HDMI extender.

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 11-29-2011, 06:56 AM:

How would your scheduling work?

I would assume that you currently start the preshow a set time before the 35mm content starts so you get a smooth transition.

With the centralised system would you have many outputs, or just one signal sent to all theatres?

Posted by Steven J Hart (Member # 2340) on 11-29-2011, 08:19 AM:

We use video servers from Brightsign for our pre-show content. You publish your content to an SD card using an authoring program or you can have all your units networked and scheduled to run what you want when you want it. Supports 1080p video, and the output looks great on our Series 2 NEC. (HDMI output connected to DVI on the NEC)

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 11-29-2011, 10:30 AM:

The cheapest option would probably be a DVD player or Blu-Ray player for each screen. It is possible to create DVDs (and, I assume, Blu-Rays) that self-repeat. You could connect these to the video projectors via component or HDMI.

Alternatively, you could have one player and an analog component distribution amplifier, but the cost of the distro box and the cabling would probably exceed the cost of half a dozen DVD or BR players. You would also need an audio distribution amp and probably would want transformers to balance the audio signal at the distribution end and unbalance it at the processor end.

This is probably not what you actually had in mind, but it is cheap and easy to implement. The equipment is cheap enough to be disposable and can be replaced with a trip to your local Best Buy (or similar).

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 11-29-2011, 02:14 PM:

Also, with a central ad-box that gets image distributed to all the houses at the same time... you'll likely be playing a good number of the ads either when the houses are all running shows themselves or each of the ads only gets seen by one house.

Vaguely similar to the DVD-player option...
If you don't want to author DVD's every week/month, it's still likely cheaper to buy a bunch of low-power computers and stick them next to your pre-show projector (and just have it display a playlist of your ads) than to get a server and get all the distribution in place. And it would cost you pretty much nothing to either run network cabling so you could update each house's playlist or just copy them off a usb stick.

Posted by Nils Hoover (Member # 6636) on 11-30-2011, 04:06 PM:

quote: Dave Macaulay
I may be missing something, but why use HDMI? There are lots of VGA distribution systems. You don't need sound as well on the video cable - the main advantage of HDMI.

I do need Audio, we play shorts as well as ads, the shorts have sound, and the ads have music, however I have seen VGA distribution systems with audio as well (seprately through 1/8th jack or something), so I should look into this more.

quote: Mark Hajducki
How would your scheduling work?

I would assume that you currently start the preshow a set time before the 35mm content starts so you get a smooth transition.

With the centralised system would you have many outputs, or just one signal sent to all theatres?

Each segment is only about a minute long, the ad segments are alternating between short films, so its easy to just turn off the projector between segments and then start the 35mm print.

quote: Steven J Hart
We use video servers from Brightsign for our pre-show content...

Thanks, I am going to look into this, looks like close to the ideal solution, although it may be out of my price range.

quote: Chris Slycord

Also, with a central ad-box that gets image distributed to all the houses at the same time... you'll likely be playing a good number of the ads either when the houses are all running shows themselves or each of the ads only gets seen by one house.

Vaguely similar to the DVD-player option...
If you don't want to author DVD's every week/month, it's still likely cheaper to buy a bunch of low-power computers and stick them next to your pre-show projector (

The ads will be on a loop playing while the power is on, between shows the projectors wold be turned back on (either manually or automated further down the line). Having individual computers may be a good cheap option, although it starts to get more complicated to update it (with the right setup it wouldn't need to be very complicated though).

Thanks every one for all of you suggestions and warnings, I would still appreciate continued suggestions, I will continue my research from here.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 11-30-2011, 06:10 PM:

I have no idea of how much those video servers cost, but it might be worth your while to look into building/creating your own video servers instead of buying off-the-shelf. It might be cheaper and you could set it up to be exactly what you want it to be.

It occurs to me that if you require just one main server and some number of slaves, you might want to look at icecast, which does video as well as audio streaming. That would allow you to set up a master playlist on your server and play it back through any number of slaves.

I run a publicly accessible icecast server but it's audio only; I've never had any need for streaming video.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-01-2011, 12:15 AM:

quote: Nils Hoover
The ads will be on a loop playing while the power is on, between shows the projectors wold be turned back on (either manually or automated further down the line).

That's exactly the issue I was mentioning. Like when I first worked in the business we had a cassette tape (and later, a CD) that would play between shows with music and advertisement for a radio station. But most of the ads never were heard by anyone because more often than not, it would play in that portion of the loop when all the shows were running.

That is, unless you're having it so that your server does separate playback for each auditorium (which might go beyond the capabilities of a generic off-the-shelf computer.

quote: Nils Hoover
Having individual computers may be a good cheap option, although it starts to get more complicated to update it (with the right setup it wouldn't need to be very complicated though).

I don't think it would be very complicated at all. You either:
1) Put the new video files and playlist on a thumb drive then copy it to each house and over-write the old one
or
2) Put the new one on a local ftp server and download them. And for simplicity, this can be automated.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 12-02-2011, 03:14 AM:

What format are your ads in? I see that a central server with a single playout schedule loop makes things a lot easier, I just can't imagine that having the same schedule for all screens is such a good idea... although, with a very short loop, it may be okay.

HDMI for multipoint distribution can be a pain in the ass... because all display devices need to negotiate on a common format and every change on one device may cause the whole HDMI system to reinititialize - that is, you switch off one of the beamers and then all of them blank for a short time. For this application, HDMI or DVI suck. Use VGA or component + audio for distribution.

We are using a basic media player software on a windows PC. They can play all formats directly. Sometimes they crash, but it's a rare occasion if you keep a discipline on the ad server software.

In how far do you consider the WDs unreliable? Yes, they do not play every format, and sometimes they crash, but that is the same for all computer based players.

- Carsten

Posted by Nils Hoover (Member # 6636) on 12-02-2011, 02:07 PM:

Our loop is pretty short. The whole loop is around 30minutes, but the ads themselves repeat every 3-5 minutes. this keeps the shorts fresh, while still keeping the advertisers happy (the sequence is Short1 - Ads1 - Short2 - Ads2 - short3 - Ads1 - etc.).

I think now I am looking into VGA w/ Stereo audio as a solution, either that or a Digital Signage setup.

The WD players crash, and don't load and just give a lot of problems, having to restart them several times until they start working properly. Most recently we have been having distortion on some of the shorts w/pixelated artifacts and skipping. Any way, I am just getting fed up with them.

The main thing about having it centralized is right now I have to render out multiple files if I change an ad, make 30 copies of each file (naming them 01_filename.avi, 02_filename.avi, etc.) and then copy all 30 files onto 5 different flash drives. If I made one huge file, I would have to re-render all of the shorts every time I change a slide, which would take forever, certainly longer than what I have to do now any way.

So even if a computer would still crash occasionally and have problems, having it centralized would save me lots of time.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 12-02-2011, 04:09 PM:

Wondering if networked players could be a better solution. Although it may take considerable time and money to buy and test gear.
I own a WD TV live privately, I have never seen that kind of reliability problem, although with a typical mix of files...

What I do not like about all media players is that they have their menu/OSD on the same output signal as the media. Our MediaPlayer PC is dual headed and plays video to the secondary monitor output only. This defaults to black so audience never sees anything beyond black on screen. Lucky enough, even the typical crash every few weeks will only give a black screen (but nasty audio).

Try MPC-HC or VLC, they have Playlist support. Also some media center software could be used. There are some dedicated media players on the market, don't know what your budget is.

- Carsten

Posted by Nils Hoover (Member # 6636) on 06-13-2012, 12:00 PM:

Just an update... Sorry if this is boosting a dead topic, I tried to just edit the original topic with an update for any one searching the forum, but I guess it is too old to do that.

I ended up going with a VGA +audio(1/8th inch) Distributed Amplifier. Have a computer using a VLC playlist, starts on boot. Bought VGA cables with built in 1/8inch audio. Have a screen that is on a 100' vga cable, no quality loss on video, on the audio there is an undesired buzz, going to buy some separate audio cable for that run.

This not only works great for the ads/short films, but we have run some multi-screen events, and it worked very nicely (used a component cable to VGA adapter).

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 06-13-2012, 03:20 PM:

Go with CAT5 cable and audio transformers. Cheap, easy to use, no power supply needed, no hum and buzz.

- Carsten