Playing video to projector while controlling syncronized RGB pizels

[andyaz]

I have been researching for hours and have not come up with a good solution for what I want to do. I have LOR4 and Xlights4 and I have to say after playing with them both I love Xlights... So here is my situation:

Last year I did a projection mapped show using a single projector to play custom video sequences on multiple planes of the exterior of the house quite successfully. The video is full HD 1808p @ 30fps.
This year I would like to step that up by adding RGB pixel elements as highlights to the show such as a 24x50 MegaTree, roof lines, bushes, etc. I see that Xlights will allow me to sequence an MP3 and schedule it to play the media and sequence simultaneously. I see I can schedule and play a video but can not tie a sequence to it simultaneously. I have read about using FPP on a Pi where you can marry a sequence to a video media, but I see that the Pi does not support full HD 1080p video output. I have read about using the BBB but I am not sure it will handle the 1080p video. I see the PiZero is going to be supported and I think it may actually be able to do full HD but they are hard to get a hold of and need a hack of FPP to work until v2 comes out later this year.

 I would really love to use a PC and all of it's horse power and E1.31 to the controllers to do this but I do not think that Xlights is able to do this (yet?)... Is there maybe something in the dev chain for Xlights to pull this off?

Does anyone know the correct solution to this puzzle?

[Gilrock]

You should checkout what Charles did...he got it figured out using xLights:

http://nutcracker123.com/forum/index.php?topic=2376.msg14219#msg14219

[threesizes]

You should recheck your information about the Pi's. The Pi's should be able to handle 1080p without any issue.

[sean]

you would want to use a raspberry pi Model B,B+ or 2.
Do not use the BBB (it does not have as powerful a graphics processor), do not use the raspberry zero

The Model B,B+ or 2 all support 1080p/

Here is basic process i used
I take the mp3 of a song, say wizards.mp3. I go into a video editor, i use Power Director 13, i create an empty video. I paste the mp3 to the audio track. If i want a video to start at 11 seconds into my sequence, i drop video effects on video track starting at 11 seconds. Since i have the exact sound file, i can exactly position video where i want it. In this case the first 11 seconds would be blank.

I now save this as wizards.mp4

I run my lights from the master , 45K channels. The playlist would be something like
1) wizards.mp3    wizards.fseq
2) carol.mp3      carol.mp3
3) soundfile        sequence file

in the second rpi, i configure the FPP to be a slave. There is no playlist, there are no fseq files.  i just upload wizards.mp4 and carol.mp4.

Now when the master plays, it starts wizards.fseq, starts using wizards.mp3 for the sound. A signal is sent to the slave saying "I am running wizards.fseq". The slave looks to see if it has wizards.fseq (it doesnt), the slave looks if it has wizards.mp3 (it doesn't), it looks for a wizards.mp4, yes!. It now starts playing the wizards.mp4 and keeps it within one frame of the master fpp.

you can have thousands of slaves, thousands of projectors. Each raspberry pi can drive 1080p.
This assumed all lights being driven from master FPP. One FPP can drive 512,000 so it is probably enough, but what if you want one of the slaves to be your neighbor? Just send their slave the fseq sequence files, connect controllers to that slave.

[mararunr]

you would want to use a raspberry pi Model B,B+ or 2.
Do not use the BBB (it does not have as powerful a graphics processor), do not use the raspberry zero

The Model B,B+ or 2 all support 1080p/

Here is basic process i used
I take the mp3 of a song, say wizards.mp3. I go into a video editor, i use Power Director 13, i create an empty video. I paste the mp3 to the audio track. If i want a video to start at 11 seconds into my sequence, i drop video effects on video track starting at 11 seconds. Since i have the exact sound file, i can exactly position video where i want it. In this case the first 11 seconds would be blank.

I now save this as wizards.mp4

I run my lights from the master , 45K channels. The playlist would be something like
1) wizards.mp3    wizards.fseq
2) carol.mp3      carol.mp3
3) soundfile        sequence file

in the second rpi, i configure the FPP to be a slave. There is no playlist, there are no fseq files.  i just upload wizards.mp4 and carol.mp4.

Now when the master plays, it starts wizards.fseq, starts using wizards.mp3 for the sound. A signal is sent to the slave saying "I am running wizards.fseq". The slave looks to see if it has wizards.fseq (it doesnt), the slave looks if it has wizards.mp3 (it doesn't), it looks for a wizards.mp4, yes!. It now starts playing the wizards.mp4 and keeps it within one frame of the master fpp.

you can have thousands of slaves, thousands of projectors. Each raspberry pi can drive 1080p.
This assumed all lights being driven from master FPP. One FPP can drive 512,000 so it is probably enough, but what if you want one of the slaves to be your neighbor? Just send their slave the fseq sequence files, connect controllers to that slave.

+1  Thank you Sean

[thevikester]

you would want to use a raspberry pi Model B,B+ or 2.
Do not use the BBB (it does not have as powerful a graphics processor), do not use the raspberry zero

The Model B,B+ or 2 all support 1080p/

Here is basic process i used
I take the mp3 of a song, say wizards.mp3. I go into a video editor, i use Power Director 13, i create an empty video. I paste the mp3 to the audio track. If i want a video to start at 11 seconds into my sequence, i drop video effects on video track starting at 11 seconds. Since i have the exact sound file, i can exactly position video where i want it. In this case the first 11 seconds would be blank.

I now save this as wizards.mp4

I run my lights from the master , 45K channels. The playlist would be something like
1) wizards.mp3    wizards.fseq
2) carol.mp3      carol.mp3
3) soundfile        sequence file

in the second rpi, i configure the FPP to be a slave. There is no playlist, there are no fseq files.  i just upload wizards.mp4 and carol.mp4.

Now when the master plays, it starts wizards.fseq, starts using wizards.mp3 for the sound. A signal is sent to the slave saying "I am running wizards.fseq". The slave looks to see if it has wizards.fseq (it doesnt), the slave looks if it has wizards.mp3 (it doesn't), it looks for a wizards.mp4, yes!. It now starts playing the wizards.mp4 and keeps it within one frame of the master fpp.

you can have thousands of slaves, thousands of projectors. Each raspberry pi can drive 1080p.
This assumed all lights being driven from master FPP. One FPP can drive 512,000 so it is probably enough, but what if you want one of the slaves to be your neighbor? Just send their slave the fseq sequence files, connect controllers to that slave.

Thank you Sean, I was hoping to see this in basic terminology! ...\One more question on this...more so from the preview standpoint, you never really account for the video in the sequence itself, so nothing is showing on the preview...would that be a correct presumption.

[sean]

that is correct, we do not have the ability to show mp4's in our layout preview. as far as xLights is concerned all my shows are a sound file and lights.

So , think of it this way, I sequence sound file to lights using xLights. I then go and sequence sound file to video using power director. I have the sound but i dont see the lights while i am in power director video editor.