Shifting the Video Wall into Overdrive

How Vizrt is using AMD professional graphics cards to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and value

not an option of course, neither cost-wise, space-wise or power-wise. The objective here is to use only a small number of high-end PC-based graphics workstations which can contain multiple graphics cards with each card providing multiple output ports. And these graphics cards need to have a very high graphics performance to drive this large number of outputs in extreme resolutions.”

“In addition,” says Christian, “we need to synchronise the workstations so that the animations and videos displayed on the wall are 100% synchronous over all screens and computers. If this is not done, the picture would be broken up, you’d see some tearing and some splits and this is absolutely not acceptable for viewers and broadcasters.” He raises another issue, “In the broadcast environment, the video wall should run on the same sync source as the TV camera. If the frequency and sync of the TV camera filming the video wall is not the same as that of the video wall itself, you will see some tearing and the animation would jitter.”

Indispensable tools for broadcasters

These days, video walls are everywhere. You’ll see them used in regular studio broadcasting, in entertainment and educational productions and in live interactive broadcasting. Video walls with touch screens have become indispensable tools for what-if scenarios, and allow the presenter to visualize different possible outcomes with virtually no delay. No one is more prominent in this field than Vizrt and to consolidate its technological and market leadership in this field, the company has now standardised on AMD professional graphics cards.

Vizrt

Vizrt creates innovative content production tools for the digital media industry, solutions that push creative boundaries and develop new ways of telling stories. Products range from 3D graphics tools and maps applications, to integrated video workflows and online publishing tools. Vizrt software is used by many of the world’s largest broadcasters and leading publishing houses, including: CNN, CBS, Fox, BBC, Sky, ITN, ZDF, Star TV, Network 18, TV Today, CCTV, NHK, The Globe and Mail, The Telegraph, and Die Welt Online. Furthermore, many world-class production houses and corporate institutions, including both the New York and London Stock Exchanges, utilize Vizrt solutions.

High performance video walls need high performance graphics solutions

Christian Huber, Executive VP IT and Logistics at Vizrt explains, “Our broadcast customers are more and more using video walls in their studios. That means we have to drive the very large number of displays that make up these walls, 20, 30 or even 40, simultaneously and that is quite a challenge.” He continues, “Having one computer per display is

40 Exactly what we need

Christian points out, “This is why we have switched to AMD for our video walls. We saw that we could get a much higher density in terms of output channels per computer compared with the competitor’s solution we’d used previously.”

AMD’s complete line of professional graphics cards encompasses 2D and 3D graphics workstation and mobile products to offer a complete top-to-bottom, enterprise-wide solution. AMD’s ATI FirePro™ V8800 2Gb professional graphics card is certified for many CAD and DCC applications and supports Microsoft® DirectX® 11 and OpenGL 4.0. ATI Eyefinity technology allows the operation of multiple high-resolution displays simultaneously, enabling the grouping of multiple monitors into a video wall as one desktop workspace. AMD’s ATI FirePro™ S400 synchronization module allows these cards to be synchronized to external sources (genlock) or synchronization of 3D rendering of multiple graphics cards in different systems (framelock).

Christian again, “With the AMD solution we have exactly what we need. We now equip identical HP workstations with multiple V8800 graphics cards then daisy chain the workstations using the S400 sync module.” He adds, “Our Viz Engine rendering engine makes use of the genlock and framelock capabilities of the S400 boards using the API from AMD to ensure that the rendering on all the V8800 boards is 100% synchronous and is genlocked to the house sync of the TV studio.”

Complete satisfaction

According to Christian, there are a number of benefits of using AMD professional graphics cards. He says, “The AMD solution reduces the number of workstations required for a video wall. Fewer computers mean reduced equipment cost, less set-up time for us and for the customer and much less rack space. Power consumption is reduced, too.”

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