Production Switchers

We have recently acquired a demo version of ProVideoServer to accompany our Ross Carbonite switcher. We are trying to establish connection between the two using Ethernet via AMP. To this point, we have been unable to establish any connection for simple commands like play and stop. I am hoping there may be users with some experience in setting up the two devices who may be able to bounce some ideas as to where to troubleshoot.

Right now I have Slot 29 in device configuration set to server, subtype set to amp_0.2, IP set to the 2nd network port on the back of the switcher, and no preroll.

I have enclosed pictures what I hope is all the relevant settings, any help is much appreciated.

I'm not an expert on AMP, but when I set it up on my Mira a while back I had no problems.

Just making sure that 1) you added your server via its IP as a device, 2) you mapped that device to an input. (The second part always trips me up.)

Also, have you tried switching your video server settings to TCP instead of UDP?
#Carbonite

So what is mentioned above by the killer of organics is correct you need to make sure you set on the other side for TCP. We don't use UDP for AMP.
#Carbonite

I figured out the connection issues, and it related back to what you said above. Right now, I'm having difficulty talking to multiple individual channels with ProVideoServer. I can only trigger one channel at a time, despite setting up four channels on the Carbonite. Regardless of whether I setup multiple AMP devices (which I know isn't necessary), or assign all 4 channels to the the one many AMP Device control ProVideoServer only lets me speak to one channel at a time. Just wondering if that has happened to anyone else?
#Carbonite

Just to get more clarification -- Your able to talk to all 4 independent channels but only 1 at a time. Or all 4 talk to the same channel -- channel 1 all of the time?
#Carbonite

I am able to talk to all 4 channels independently, but only through the video server (ProVideoServer) settings. The server also has a multi channel setting that will fire all 4 channels based upon one trigger.

ProVideoServer has the option under preferences to respond the signal from Carbonite to either fire off one channel individually, or trigger all 4 together. I thought by selecting multi channel in the PVS settings that it would respond to the individually channel request from Carbonite.

So I followed your video, and set up one AMP with all 4 channels assigned to that AMP signal. But when I build the CC, and assign which channel I want to trigger from Carbonite it's as if PVS only receives the signal and then triggers only what channel is set up in the PVS settings.

This would be fine if I could add 4 separate AMP devices under the PVS settings, however it only connects to the first device setup. It will connect to the first device setup in PVS, but will remain "listening" in the other 3 setups ( one for each channel.) I assume this has to do with using the same port (3811) when setting up a video server. I have attached a few pictures below to show the AMP settings, and PVS settings as well.

I must be missing a step, as I've seen PVS videos where they seem to be cuing individual channels via a Ross switcher.

Thank you Les,

Your videos have been extremely helpful in my setups.

#Carbonite

Okay -- and in the Carbonite config menu when your doing the device assign for the channels you also pressed the Next button and gave them different channel numbers. IE channel 1 got 1 and 2 got 2 etc....
#Carbonite

Right, I saw that in your video as well. That's where people trip up, so I assigned A to Channel 1 - B to Channel 2 - C to Channel 3 - D to Channel 4
#Carbonite

Well then this is all on the PVS side of things then. We can set this up with many different brands of video server -- Abekas(yes now Ross but before Ross), Ross - SMS/BVS and XPression, GVG, NewTek and others
#Carbonite

Ok, I'll talk to the PVS people more.

thanks
#Carbonite

I think I know what the issue is -- They may only allow one server control even though the CRAT then sends the VTR Channel name for any of the 4. They might just ignore all of the info and then force it to a channel. Your correct you can only configure one device per PORT. So you can not have 4 running on 3811 only 1.

Carbonite does not allow you to set a user PORT number for AMP as that has a specific port of 3811 in the protocol. Also that it is in the Protocol to support multiple channels over the one TCP IP PORT and service.

The PVS needs to enable this.
#Carbonite

Thanks, I'll relay this information to the support at PVS.
#Carbonite

Just to follow up, PVS said that my best bet would be to set up 4 separate AMP devices as connections. This would not work, as I would need 3 additional user ports (in addition to 3811), but Carbonite will not allow me to create additional user ports. Again, ProVideoServer apparently doesn't not have the capability to connect to the 4 AMP devices through one port, which Ross is configured to do. As far as I cant tell, there is no solution unless Ross sells some kind of shotbox hardware that speaks to 4 channels?

Just as a side question- When building an AMP Custom Control, can I only cue up specific videos based upon the video ID/Slug? Is there a way to build a pure Cue Next custom control, just to move down the playlist of videos? Similar to RossTalk, and Next/Prev controls of Xpression.


#Carbonite

Not that I want to get into a big back and forth with PVS. However the AMP protocol states multichannel over a single connection and with port 3811. You can setup multiple connections but yes they will use port 3811. Hence the issue you have had.

AMP does not have commands that work in the manner of controlling playlists the way your asking.

I know renewed vision supports RossTalk on other products that would better enable that I think.
#Carbonite

Thanks Ryan for starting this thread. We have also trying to set up the PVS with our Carbonite Black Plus.and having the same problems you describe. We spent some time on this with Chip Broadwell when he did our commissioning a couple of months ago and like you, we were only able to get one channel to work. I'll contact PVS as well. Maybe if they realize there are more people interested, they may move to fix the problem. Les's comments are helpful in isolating the source of the problem.
#Carbonite

Hi Guys -- We released v12.4 yesterday to the website. You will now be able to change the Port that AMP uses. It will default in the Device Config menu to Port 3811 but now you will be able to change it. The option control now has an extra option for port.

This does completely go against the Specification of AMP (Advanced Media Protocol) which I am not a Fan of :) -- VDCP had this type of fragmentation occur and that resulted in numerous video servers that did not "communicate" the same and individual "tweaks" per video server had to be made when we implemented those in Vision and Acuity.

Rant done hope this helps you.

Les
#Carbonite

Thank you Les. It's taken me some time to update firmware and test this. We recently upgraded to v13 and today I did some testing with the PVS.
I had no problem communicating with all four channels as long as I set them up as different devices in the Carbonite and then assigned them consecutive port numbers both in Carbonite and correspondingly in the PVS Config. When I select a channel in preview, the Play and Cue commands appear and they work. Pressing the NEXT button brings up LoopOn, LoopOff, and Stop. Of these, only the stop command works.

I also tried to see what I could control using custom control macros. Here is what I found. by following instructions in Les's video tutorial on AMP servers.
You can easily create a macro to play a specific clip by having it loaded in the server channel and recording a 2 step macro to select the server channel on the preset bus, followed by pressing CUE (knob below command screen). This reads the file name of the currently cued clip into the macro. You can also do this in Dashboard by entering the clip name, again following the instructions in the tutorial. There are, however, some significant limitations.

The ProVideoServer will only respond to the macro if the file is already loaded into the playlist for that channel. Also, one cannot load a playlist by name as PVS does not save playlists.
Beyond these limitations, it seems to work well however. I hope this is helpful to others who may want to integrate a PVS with Carbonite.
#Carbonite

Thanks for the update!!!

FYI that with Tria Express (or any of the Abekas Line) Carbonite can Cue and Play all clips in the library and also Cue and Play all of the Playlists as well.

Les
#Carbonite

Yes indeed. The Tria is where were are looking to go as soon as the budget is available. We had an old Mac Pro and a Blackmagic quad card sitting here so it made sense to try out the ProVideoServer. It is very easy to operate and one can certainly make do with it using the AMP control but the old adage is true; you get what you pay for!
Thanks for your guidance on this and for getting the capability to change port numbers as it does provide an option some folks might be interested in.

Just for the record, I also tested a single channel PVS setup on an older Mac mini with the BMD mini monitor via Thunderbolt. That also works fine and could provide two channels on one of the newer Mac minis with Thunderbolt.

Not suggesting this as a substitute for a Tria but for someone perhaps running a Solo and looking for an inexpensive playout solution on a budget, this is worth looking at.
#Carbonite

WELL ;)

Soon the Solo will have the built in H.264 player for that lower cost clip player ;)
#Carbonite