Resolume Forum

Hey !

I'm new to this forum, so firstly hello, my respects

I am a musician, thinking about a new electronic music show. I would like to have control over my music with Ableton, and several DMX lights (8 to 16 maybe) with an Enttec USB interface.

And I want to work with video too, by myself. I have this idea of using old CRT tvs to display different sources. Maybe 4-8 different screens... I found there were multiples options to do that.

1 - Initially, I wanted to do it with Raspberry pis, with Dicaffeine (https://dicaffeine.com/) which is a NDI player and streamer, or Piwall, which is a similar program : https://crt.gg/piwall. But Raspberry pis are completely out of stock for now, and quite unaffordable, a lot more expensive on the second hand market.

2 - I read this nice topic about using multiples outputs with Resolume : https://resolume.com/support/en/lots-of-outputs but as it brought me a lot of infos, teach me a lot of stuffs, it confused me a little bit more about all that. I can't figure what solution would be the best for me. Two Matrox triplehead, to have six outputs and not spending a lot of money? To build a custom laptop with a Blackmagic quad 2? Or even investing into a more expensive solution, with a Datapath FX4? Is it not too much for 5 or 6 crt? lol.

3 - Using something more home-made/technical, like Arduinos?

I planed to buy a new laptop for this project. I have a 10 year old mac, not suitable for this (sending midi infos, multiples audio outputs, dmx infos + multiple video outputs at the same time...) so I thought to buy a brand new macbook pro 14", but on the Apple website, they say that it can only handle two external monitors... So if I go for the option 2, it's not powerful enought (?)

A newbie with multiple screens project = multiple questions
What kind of laptop do you use for this kind of project? Something you built yourself?
What do you think about all this? Is it a over challenging project for someone like me?

Thanks!

anyone?

NDI with hardware decoders would be probably the easiest, but likely not the cheapest.

The DVI version of the Matrox triple heads can output analog signal, but you'd still need to go to a format the CRT tv supports, which means more converters. If you can get CRT monitors, then passive DVI-I ->VGA dongles could do it on the cheap.

Ok thanks!

Yeah, I think the hardware decoders would be too expensive for me (like 500e for 1 decoder, and I would need 4-8 for my 4-8 CRTs...). Too bad that Raspberry pi's are not longer available :'(

If I go with the Matrox solution with a 14' Macbook pro, which can handle two different external monitors; I could display only two different images? No more than the graphic card of the laptop can offer, right?

A Triple Head can break a single laptop output to 3x displays. https://www.matrox.com/en/video/product ... al-edition

Ok great
I'm gonna try that, just bought two of them.
Thanks!!

I actually built a set out of old CRTs for a festival a while back,

Set up had set up with 6 live channels running to stage with a 4 way RF amplifiers had 24 CRT TVs and just had the TV's distributed around stage, so didn't have same image on screens at same time... use RF TV signal is easiest and cheapest method I found.

Also resolume no longer supports inpit from entec USB box, only supports artnet adaptors.

Dear @georgesgeorges
About the macbook outputs, the M1 Pro only have 2 video outputs, but the M1 Max have 3 outputs up to 6k and one 4k (hdmi).
About the use of old CRTs, if you are in a low budget, you can duplicate your outputs with an inexpensive HDMI splitter with those cheap upscalers that outputs composite signals.
I use these boxes for a long time without any issues, Im tired of those blackmagic frills about framerates, uncommon resolutions… these cheap boxes do the work just fine.

splitter
https://www.amazon.com/Splitter-Monitor ... pons&psc=1

hdmi to composite
https://www.amazon.com/DIGITNOW-Analogu ... 277&sr=8-3