The system consists of a server housed in the equipment room with a decklink card running software called CASPAR CG (open source).
The two iMacs (that can still be used for Premiere playback as a backup) are used to setup playback lineups and control playback of the CASPAR CG software.
The software running on the iMacs to control CASPAR is called SuperConductor (also open source.)
User Logs in to IMac A or B With EID and Pw Then Copies the settings from tempstorage to the Documents folder (Keefe working on a script that does this automatically?) |
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Next mount the media server so can add files to the playback library Click on >Go>Connect to Server Files should be a .mp4 or .h264 of the story package or PSA commercial to play during the newscast |
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Type in smb://192.168.1.1 Then click on Connect |
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User Name and PW is user: ftp password: casparftp | |
| mount "Media" share |
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Next look for the app named SuperConductor in Applications |
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When the application opens Check that the server is connected to the application. Go to >Home >Bridges >Check Casper CG in the upper left corner and >Internal Bridge >Devices Status should all be green If not green then RESTART the IMac don't just log out RESTART and tha seems to fix it. |
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Next Click on Layers DVR A and B have settings Example here is DVRB should be set to Chanel 2 Layer 1 and CasparCG 2-1 should be set to Chanel 2 Layer 1 DVRA should be set to Chanel 1 Layer 1 and CasparCG 1-1 should be set to Chanel 1 Layer 1 |
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Next to add content to the Media server Simply drag over the file to the media server as shown The file should automatically show up in the SuperConductor library. If it does not load open QuickTime player and export out a 1080 file to recompress and it will fix the problem and the file will show up in the app. |  |
Click on Default Rundown tab to use the rundown playback
hit refresh on SuperConductor (need a picture for this)When the file loads into the library drag it to the Rundown menu Once the file is loaded then click the Cue first part button to cue up the clip for playback |
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Then when DVRA or B is pressed on the Ross Switcher the file will play automatically. |
Katherine Heard set this up before she left, but ran out of time to document before she left. Hopefully we can get her back in a month and she can get all the things in this wiki. The crash cart is a useful KVM in the equipment rack room to use for directly plugging into the CASPAR server for configuration, for example, we already messed up the ftp login and had to re allow access by this method.
The advantage of this setup is that it does not require setup of a timeline. It accepts all frame rates, and raster sizes and does the conversion in realtime...so, the students are told 1080i, but if they mess that up, no big deal.
These general users (like ftp) will not and should not be the final way we use this system, but for now we're doing our best to try and get this thing rolling without spending 40k on a play out system...this was essentially free.
To Play SuperConductor from iMac
To control SuperConductor from Ross switcher
To setup SuperConductor to connect to CASPAR