What's New

 80 Channel DVD Synchronized Video Installation

A pair of video artists known as "The Art Guys" have completed a video art installation at the Houston airport that was commissioned from them by Continental Airlines. The grand opening was December 2nd, 2003 in Houston's Terminal E at the George Bush International Airport in Houston. The installation art, called the "Video Ring" consists of 80 large color monitors with 80 channels of video playing on 80 Pioneer DVD players, all synchronized using five of our DVDplay-16 DVD synchronizers. The five synchronizers are networked together using our built in synchronizing network to create an 80 channel frame accurate synchronizer.

The installation is playing 80 copies of the same DVD authored by The Video Guys, but the synchronizers have been programmed to play the discs so they are offset from each other by 3 frames per player. This gives the installation a motion where the images seem to be rotating around the ring at a fairly fast and continuous rate. By synchronizing the DVDs exactly to the frame, and offsetting them by 3 frames, The Art Guys have created a smooth continuous motion video installation for travelers to enjoy as they walk through the airport terminal.

Additional information and images can be found on The Art Guys web site, including a video clip of the images in motion.

http://www.theartguys.com/current.html

 Important Info about Low Cost DVD-R discs

We have had a number of reports of people having problems accurately synchronizing presentations when their programs have been burned on low cost DVD-R discs, and the problems going away when they re-burn their video onto higher quality discs. The problem seems to be coming from the type of dye used by some disc manufacturers in creating the DVD-R discs. The DVD format has the ability to recover from errors in the bit stream. When the errors are large enough the player may drop a frame of video, but continue to play. While watching a movie this isn't a big deal, since the viewer will probably never notice a missing frame. But when synchronizing multiple channels of video, if the player drops a frame it can cause the presentation to no longer be accurately synchronized.

We highly recommend that if you need an accurately synchronized presentation, that you only use Apple or some other high quality brand of discs. Why spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars creating a multi-channel presentation, and then take a chance on the quality in order to save a few dollars on the discs?

There may also be an issue with some of the newer 8X discs, so you may be better off sticking to 2X or 4X discs.

 Pioneer's Low Cost DVD-V5000 Players

Pioneer has an industrial DVD player that costs less than it's other players, but is still compatable with our DVDplay series synchronizers. The DVD-V5000 player has a couple of extra features over older players, but is also missing a few features. This tradeoff results in a lower cost player for situations where you do not need to be exact to the frame.

The DVD-V5000 players do not have an external sync input, so it is not possible for us to synchronize them exactly to the frame. But even without that black burst input these players can still be synchronized to within 2 frames of each other. For many installations this may be close enough. If you need to be exact to the frame we suggest you look at the Pioneer DVD-V8000 players (or the older 7300/7400 players).

For more information on the different players that work with our DVDplay synchronizers, see our DVD player summary.

 Pioneer's New DVD-V8000 Players

We worked directly with Pioneer to make sure that their new DVD-V8000 players would be compatable with our DVDplay synchronizer. These new players have a number of additional features that make them even better than the older 7300/7400 series players. They include progressive output, digital video output, built in line doublers, simultaneous composite and component outputs, and many more.

We did discover a small issue with the initial firmware that only effects mixing the old and new players in the same physical installation. Pioneer has developed updated firmware to take care of this issue. It is possible that a few of the initial units shipped still have the old firmware. If you have early units and plan to mix V8000 players with 7300 or 7400 players in the same installation then contact us about whether you have the updated firmware. If not we can help you update it.

For more information on the different players that work with our DVDplay synchronizers, see our DVD player summary.

 Synchronizer Tutorials

We have added a new tutorial about frame accurate DVD synchronization. It contains a number of items to be aware of and to watch out for when trying to create frame accurate presentations using synchronized video on DVD. Frame Accurate Synchronization