HDSync “Still in Amsterdam” 1.3
News
Download zoneThis release makes PGM broadcast more stable by updating the 0mq library to version 2.2 and libpgm to version 5.2.122. The handshake now works better in different network conditions.
Thanks go to Christian Walter for his experienced troubleshooting and for hiring our services, which basically makes this bugfix release possible.
Also through 2012 HDSync was customized for more stability and adopted by our friend Michael van Rosmalen for a prestigious exhibition:
“International Tour After History: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer” (distributed by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht)
HDSync was touring around the world in this exhibition. It consist of up to 11 players all synced playing a slide show imitating old slide projectors, including the click-slide-clunk sound coming from the projectors build in speakers. Venues and Dates:
- Gwangju Biennale 2012, Gwangju, 7 September-11 November 2012
- OCAT, Shenzhen, 21 September-16 November 2012
- Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 15 October-6 January 2013,
- CUNY, New York, April-May 2013
Interesting facts
The record number of synced audio/video channels using HDSync is up to 37 different channels: the Ambarella video wall
HDSync is portable and can be compiled and used on different hardware: its code is written C/C++ that compiles for targets as ARM, MIPS and x86 platforms.
The digital video syncstarter software was developed between 2006 and 2012 in the Montevideo/NIMk Artlab. In 2013, as a consequence of cultural funding cuts in the Netherlands, the Artlab has been shut down and the whole institute has been closed after 35 years of activity. Since then, the development of HDSync is not publicly funded anymore. For further development, the Syncstarter project needs your support.
HDSync makes heavy use of PGM multicast (RFC 3208), which is basically UDP traffic, to synchronise multiple units on the same local network. In order for it to work, make sure your LAN switch does not block UDP multicast: old hubs work best.
HDSync reaches a fairly precise frame synchronization, down to a randomly occurring error rate of 3 frames out of sync, which is hardly noticeable in most footage. 1 to 1 frame synchronisation is impossible to achieve with our software.
It is necessary to add 5 seconds of black in front of any synced audio/video footage in order to avoid an irregular blink at the start of every loop.
Syncstarter community
Discussion mailinglistWe are grateful the encouraging feedback we receive from users of our software all over the world, last but not least John Koczera from the Harvard University VES Department (Visual Environmental Studies) says:
I successfully introduced this software to some old players I found online. I then made this software, along with my version of documentation available to our students on our media networks. The response was great. We had several successful artworks shown this past spring at our end of year opening.