What is a Media Server? Do I Need One? Is it the Same as Pixel Mapping?

hi friend david here from learn stage lighting and in today's video we want to talk about what in the world is a media server is it the same as a pixel mapper what's a pixel mapper and do i need one so this month on the channel we're talking all about getting video as part of our stage show with lighting and as we talked about in the last video that could be led wall panels it could be projection it could be actual tvs or displays as we call them or it could be playing video content across typical stage lights okay all of these are included and so now we want to dive in a little bit deeper and talk about some of the tools that get this done and talk about okay how do we use these tools to enhance our show and how does it work from a programming and playback perspective so the first thing i want to do is uh we'll we'll talk about the the triggering in the next video but i just want to talk about this concept of what a media server is do you need one a versus what a pixel mapper is so being that we're a lighting channel and i talk about lighting i want to talk first about pixel mappers okay so a pixel mapper as we talked about in the last video i'm going to open up ntxl here as a example a pixel mapper works like this you arrange your lights in this case i'm using entex elm so i've just got strips of led here you arrange them in the 2d that they're they are the 2d method that they are so um you know however they're set up in the world in 2d or 3d you set it up that way in the pixel mapper and then there's even 3d as well in a lot of these as i mentioned and then you just go ahead once you've got it on a canvas on a 2d perspective or 3d you then go ahead and you play content on it okay and that content can be any sorts of things now this is a show that i open that i realize has a lot more in it than i meant but you can choose any variety of content it can be words it can't be images it can be generated things and then these content are going to then be mapped that's that's the term pixel map is we're taking this video content as we see right here and we place it onto lights generally okay when we when we're talking about pixel mapping we're generally talking about lights and so this is going to be for stage lighting fixtures led pixel strips individual christmas light led pixels like i talk about from time to time you know anything that works via artnet or sacn um via these dmx type protocols is going to fall under the the umbrella of pixel mapping and we've got some great tools with that like i mentioned here entex elm is a killer piece of software if you're using like rgb and rgbw leds you're using led tapes or other led pixel products elm is a great choice and if you are using like physical pixels and not like a pre-built product that has a driver with it if you do buy ntx pixel drivers they give you elm for free licensed to the amount of universes that your driver can do with each driver that you buy and then you can just stack those licenses which i think is pretty stinking cool also we've got onyx so i talk about onyx a lot here on the channel it's one of my favorites and it allows you to go ahead and similarly use your 2d plan which you're already generating in onyx if you're doing shows you typically generate this and then you can go and oops i just reinstalled onyx i don't have the media and you can put media on that so i only have this one piece of media you can put a generated media on there there are a lot of options as to the things you can create and you can go ahead then and just as an example put a colorful image or video across those lights and when you actually put it on a rig of lights you see it looks really stinking cool and so that's pixel mapping now that's the basic gist of it i have other videos both here and inside of lauren's stage lighting labs that goes into detail about these two pieces of software and how to best use them but that's the general gist is you say okay i've got all these lights they may be pixel type fixtures or just fixtures you know if it's a just a regular like rgb led fixture then it's one pixel right and if it's got multiple pixels then it can be multiple and you simply place those in your 2d perspective here on onyx or if they're regular pixels uh you could use elm as another option depending on your control needs and then you can just run that video content right on top of it and it works really great okay now what's a media server so media servers i think came to our world first before pixel mappers okay and both of these on onyx and elma play the part of both and in fact most media servers also play the part of pixel mapper at least a little bit so a media server to define it is a playback device for video signals that's how i like to describe it okay so what you might find is software or hardware based approaches first they were they were boxes you bought that were very big inexpensive and the box allows you to arrange your different screens or outputs set their sizes and then output through multiple video outputs on the back of it to different devices to projectors to tvs led walls whatever okay that's a media server now today a lot of people especially if you're starting out you're going to use a computer okay so there's software like mad mapper which is made for projection mapping but it also does the media server thing too then we've got resolume which is uh used a lot in like the dj edm world okay to be able to manage multiple displays we've got our chaos which is an entry level software as well that a lot of people use and so any of these allow you to play video files and generated content things like that and play them out to multiple video displays generally choosing between a media server and a pixel mapper you've got to decide which is more important to you like a lot of these i'm not as experienced in uh media servers as i am lighting consoles that have pixel mappers and and programs like elm that are standalone but i can tell you that from my experience you know software like resolume madrix is another one they often mad mapper they often offer the ability to do led pixels within their software but it's kind of an aside it's not like their main function and then but their main function is doing multiple video outputs whereas a pixel mapper generally does a single uh video output if it can and is designed to do pixel mapping so like an l we can pop up a window i know i just closed it that gives you the output same with onyx now there's a window in here now i can go grab it quick because i haven't before but we literally go in here and it is a window and it is called dilo's zone output and if i use that window i could full screen this one and i just got to find the zone i was on there it is and i'm able to set this as the output and if i play around with it with all these settings um i can go ahead and get rid of a lot of the the sidebars and stuff and i could actually technically put this on a second monitor on its own display and project it put it on a video wall whatever is it the highest resolution no but it's something okay so when you're choosing you basically are looking at okay media server versus pixel mapper am i looking more to do lights and put lights on a canvas and run that content across them maybe including video actual like video displays you know video outputs or am i looking to do multiple video outputs i want to arrange them in the space as to where they'd be and maybe i get into pixels a little bit maybe not okay as you can see these can work together or separately in fact a program like elm actually can really bridge that gap so say just as an example you might be thinking okay david i want to do both like i want to do have my content playing on multiple displays and then i want to take that content and have a really good easy to use pixel mapper then something like intex elm might be a really great solution for you because it can take in streaming video and then map it to those lights as needed so this is just an overview it's not an in-depth tutorial on all of these but i want to give you an idea and really give you the tools to begin to understand okay this is what i would need if i want to do this right i maybe want to do more the pixel mapping the making lights play video side or maybe i'm really looking for a media server type program and i want to go ahead and make video displays play video maybe integrating the lights maybe not okay so that's really the difference and you'll know if you need one or if you need software that does it based on you know obviously it's easy media server is pretty simple you go okay i have all these video displays i want to play one image and make them all play the right parts of the image based on where they are in the space right because you could go and you could play an image you could play a video and you could just send that video content maybe it's widescreen to all your different displays and projectors and they would all display the same thing but if you want to literally stretch that across all your displays so that where the display sits in the space it plays that portion of the video then you're going to need a media server okay on the other hand the pixel mapper is a little more you know go with the flow right um chance these are all if we're talking about pixel map lights these are all lights that we could technically control with just a regular lighting console and you can do that all day long putting chases and effects upon them but employing a pixel mapper like you see here you can start to see how especially if i actually had the content loaded because i went to a new version yesterday and i totally forgot but you can see even just with the content i have here i can create so many different and unique looks literally on my stage by just selecting different media and it's a whole lot quicker and a whole lot easier than making a whole bunch of chases and effects and so hopefully that makes sense i hope this helps you if you've thought about media servers in the past if you've thought about how to get video into your lighting then these are all going to be great for you i'm excited for the rest of this series guys if you haven't grabbed my free guide to begin with lighting be sure to do that over at learnstagelighting.com and in our next video we're going to go into how to trigger video clips along with your lego like how do we keep this stuff in sync together during a show i'll see you there thanks

Channel: Learn Stage Lighting

Views: 998

Keywords: stage lighting, lighting design, DMX, stage lighting programming, console programming, FOH lighting, lighting, learn stage lighting, DMX stage lighting, lighting process, lighting programming, wire DMX, DMX512, stage lighting design, moving lights, LED par, video, lighting for video, lighting with video

Id: MNpj879weCs

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021