"27 nodes, with 4PB of flash storage for playback within Sphere and streamed in real-time to 7thSense media servers, each streaming 4K video at 60 frames per second"
I would be interested to better understand how synchronization is achieved here. Is that a relatively solved problem for applications such as this or was there significant engineering to achieve it at this scale?
> I would be interested to better understand how synchronization is achieved here.
not OP, but worked on similar large displays stitched together using multiple servers with their own GPUs
for most applications, TouchDesigner running on each server was used to arrange media on screens connected to that server as a single group, and software Sync (https://derivative.ca/UserGuide/Sync) kept media playing across different groups within a frame or two at worst. for stricter (higher budget) installations, the GPUs were chosen to have native hardware framelock-type features, but you can connect a surprising amount of displays to a single machine if you get the right server motherboard (digital signage is a big customer of those kinds of rigs)
syncing the audio with the room speakers was a completely different story
Yeah it's pretty well solved. You can buy players at retail for many years. I'm not sure what products handle this much scale seamlessly but Brightsign is the one I always preferred. I haven't gone past 4 players but it's really easy to send it a gigantic video and the software will send crops to different players and play them in sync. We did like a 10k display for very up close viewing and there was no code to write or anything. Just spend the money and run the cables.
not OP, but worked on similar large displays stitched together using multiple servers with their own GPUs
for most applications, TouchDesigner running on each server was used to arrange media on screens connected to that server as a single group, and software Sync (https://derivative.ca/UserGuide/Sync) kept media playing across different groups within a frame or two at worst. for stricter (higher budget) installations, the GPUs were chosen to have native hardware framelock-type features, but you can connect a surprising amount of displays to a single machine if you get the right server motherboard (digital signage is a big customer of those kinds of rigs)
syncing the audio with the room speakers was a completely different story