Hello, 

 

We are running a setup which has five different cameras simultaneously recording onto five different PCs, all with Avid Xpress Pro.  Currently, we begin each session by synchronizing our timer, and then manually clicking the "record" button on the capture tool for each of the five PCs.  My question is:  Is there any way to start capturing simultaneously on all five PCs?  The PCs are networked, so would there be a "go" command that could be sent at the same time?

Any and all suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

 

Juan 

Juan_at_UM:

Is there any way to start capturing simultaneously on all five PCs?

None that I know of, but You may feed time code from the same source to all cameras, having matching TC on all of the 5 captured sources, or slate them all for being able to synchronize them before editing.

Thanks luca, we do have TC on the sources, just was wondering if there was some kind of start command that could be delivered via network. 

Juan, I did not notice that it is the first time You're posting, welcome to the community;

Juan_at_UM:

we do have TC on the sources, just was wondering if there was some kind of start command that could be delivered via network

I understand that, my best guess was that You need to easily sync the clips, of course You have TC, I was talking about having matching TC; if it's a matter of remotely controlling the Avids that I don't know; I hope someone who has tried Avid on VNC (or similiar) and has info for You will chime in, if that works You may be able to control the 5 shooting boxes from a 6th computer, interesting experiment. If that doesn't work You'll need bodies, so to speak, the human Avid peripheral, 5 of them to be more precise, fitted with walkie talkies. hth

A sixth computer is possible, I would be interested to hear more on how that could be set up.  Right now, the five boxes are all hooked up to one monitor with a monitor switch/selector.  When we get ready to begin shooting, I click capture on each workstaion and then swtich the monitor view to the next workstation.  By the time the last box starts capturing, we've spent at least 30 seconds.  Not really a big deal, but I was just seeing if the process could be made more efficient.

Again thanks for the replies,

 

Juan

Why don't You try a forum search for VNC and/or remote desktop? With this kind of software a given computer acts as a server and its desktop can be displayed on a client computer, still dealing with 5 of those in a single monitor may be less convenient than Your switchbox, not to mention the sluggishness.

You can VNC into each CPU pretty easily but, there isn't a way that I know of to send any sort of call to all five applications at the same time.

If your PC keyboards are all PS-2 types, a few of these might do the trick.

 

Good luck.