VIDEO OUTPUT

blavidais

Hello!

In search of a TV channel playout scheduler for our non profit community access center I discovered Plycast.

Can I assign the software to output to a physical output of a video card? Either standard Geforce type out of black magic output? Can you have multiple channels running in one instance of the software? Say if I wanted 10 channels running content out of 10 video card outputs at once, OR have 10 physical machines. Either way mostly need to be sure I can point the content out directly, not just sending the desktop out if that makes sense.

Thanks!

macbab

The complete playout system runs using two main modules. The server (casparcg) y the client (plycast).
You can configure the casparcg module to use a system hdmi or display port out as playout output.
This is not the ideal setup for me. I remember two bad things about it:
1) When you use a video system out as playout output some WIN10 actions keep working on this
outputs too. ( for example the windows preview switcher when you hover the mouse in the bottom bar.)
2) This setup always plays with bad sync between audio and video. Sometimes this is not easy to adjust.

I suggest to use a blackmagic video board. A MiniMonitor type at least. It´s cheap and plays rock solid.

blavidais

Thank you! Great feedback,

Do you know if Plycast can schedule content at specific time slots? I need to have certain town meetings run at certain times and then fill the rest of the day with other content, then id like to copy and paste that "day" to other days of the week ideally instead of manually reentering every day.

Best,

blavidais

blavidais Also, are you referring to the pci-e mini monitor or the thunderbolt or does it matter?

macbab

blavidais

blavidais Do you know if Plycast can schedule content at specific time slots?

You can create offline playlists and also you can create sub playlists as commercials groups or spots groups.
You can save this sub groups and recall that later several times. But I don´t know how to create a full week for example.
It seems we need more information for that.

macbab

blavidais I suggest to use pci-e mini-monitor board. The server CarparCG includes drivers for pci-e.
Plycast requires Windows enviroment and thunderbolt interface was made for Mac systems

blavidais

macbab I don't know what you mean by offline playlists, Playlists would be fine but only if I can drag and drop to specific time slots. Example, our select board meetings need to run at 9am, Noon and 5pm EST. It seems odd to me that so many of these open source offerings are just randomized looping playlists. Viewers need to be able to know when they can tune in for specific material when town politics are involved.

Let me know if that helps clarify and it time specific scheduling is possible with Plycast!

Thanks so much for the help it is appreciated

macbab

blavidais It seems odd to me that so many of these open source offerings are just randomized looping playlists.

Plycast is a very good solution and it´s very stable too. But perhaps you need try a totally different playout.

blavidais Let me know if that helps clarify and it time specific scheduling is possible with Plycast!

I think this is not possible with plycast. But you can try FOLDER PLAYOUT
https://github.com/mint-dewit/folderplayout
Also you can try
https://github.com/tdoukinitsas/Playout-Manager
Plycast and this projects are open source and as you know, it may be usefull for you, or not.
For me plycast is one of my playout systems and it´s better than a lot of propietary systems.

blavidais

This is what we currently use, you can see you just drag media from the left onto any designated time slot. Super simple

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fJVqDhRzzy9HMf_tPtD-nphkLYZgdGTS/view?usp=sharing