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TripleHead2Go running on MacBook Pro.

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Success! The TripleHead2Go works fine on a MacBook Pro running MacOS X and it’s running with full 3d and core image acceleration across three monitors. My Quartonian VAST program is able to render at a decent framerate across three monitors at 2400×600. EDIT: also works fine on an iMac G5 using screen spanning doctor…..

More pics:
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My “cities of the future” itunes visualiser running inside iTunes across three displays using iVisualise.

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One hell of an FCP timeline visible area……

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Superwide desktop and dock.

There is still some issues to work out. So far it will only drive the monitors at 2400×600. The Matrox box supports triple 1024×768 which is the native resolution of these panels. However it seems the ATI cards in all recent Apple laptops cannot drive a single display at the 3072×768 resolution. According to information from the Matrox support forum, recent NVidia GPU’s can drive the display to higher resolutions so if you have a G5 tower with an Nvidia card it should be able to manage the triple 1024×768 display. This also matches my experience, on the iMac G5 I was able to select the 3072×768 resolution but window textures were corrupted and I wasn’t able to run any accelerated OpenGL apps in the second display at all.

This sort of display spanning was what I really designed Quartonian VAST for and I’ll be taking it out for it’s first live display at the Glade Festival on the Liquid stage on July 15th.

Thanks to Dave from Inside-Us-All for loaning me the matched LCD panels, which he originally bought for his very cool, Global Teleport project.

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Posted by roger on Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 at 1:53 am.

13 Responses to “TripleHead2Go running on MacBook Pro.”

hi, i work in a dual power pc mac g5, and its very interesting that the tripple head2go works in a macbookpro, you know if it would work on my g5 or there’s any hardware like this for powerpc macs?

Left by r4f0 on July 17th, 2006

there is no reason this shouldn’t work on a g5 tower but I haven’t tested it.

no software is needed, the thing just works, so ppc or intel makes no difference.

Left by roger on July 19th, 2006

Hi Roger,

I would like to run 2/3 projectors off of a dual/triple head pro.
I would be using them for live peformance … dance/theatre etc.

We have 15 and 17 ” powerbooks. I am wondering whether that is possible with the graphics cards installed on them?

We also have a couple of G5’s for FCP etc., but I would like students to work insitu so that’s why I’m wondering about the laptops.

PB G4 17″ 1.67/1.5 GB/ATI Radeon 9700/128mb
PB G4 15″ 1.5/768mb/ATI Radeon 9700/64mb

I would anticapate running standard def video on each screen.

cheers

Andy

Left by andy king on July 26th, 2006

you will run into graphics memory and disk bandwidth issues if you are trying to play three movies at the same time on those machines.

You’ll have to do some tests, I don’t have access to one of those machines to try it. I would expect that the 17″ could probably do ok with a fast FW800 external drive attached.

Left by roger on July 26th, 2006

hi there,
i’m so pleased to hear that the triplehead2go works with macbook pro, what i would like to know is although you can connect 3 screens & have them running in an enlarged image format can you separate the screens, say one for video and the other 2 for mixer & effects windows for post production work?

kind regards,
cristy.a

Left by allegra on July 27th, 2006

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I’ll go ahead and let you know the results.

cheers

Andy

Left by andy king on July 27th, 2006

Very helpful! Can you please tell me if you can set the display to 1920 x 480 (so each display is 640 x 480) on OS X? Thanks.

Left by AB on August 10th, 2006

Hi Roger & others.

I am sitting in front of my Macbook and Trippletripplehead2go with three projectors filling a curved screen of 12 x 3 meters. This is the setting for my next theatre produsction, and the rigg is working quite well.

-at 2400×600 i get fulscreen preview from FCP at 1200×300
-from QT i get the 2400×600 a 25 fps
Both above are with a JPEG- photo at 75 percent

I just started working with videos from QC and the same files that ran smooth fram QT skips in frames.

Did you try out full rez video in any of your software, and if so, what codecs and result did you have?

I used SwitchResX to set the right resolution. Got a bit worried by reading resports on screen spanning doctor and seized ibooks.

Thanks for pioneering the idea!
Also Roger, did you ever figure out the issue about QC not finding the Imaging source boxes? I saw a previous post, but no aparent resolve.

Boya

Left by lboyab on August 11th, 2006

Hi Roger,

I just bought a TripleHead2Go for my macbook pro… I should have googled before I paid, but it’s too late now…

2400×600 is the max resolution? Have you figured out a way to get around this? Is there a GPU driver/bio update that will fix this?

I’m a developer and 2400×600 is less than what I get with one external monitor and the mac book pro screen together…

I would appreciate any information you’ve been able to find.

Thanks in advance.

Left by tavon on August 30th, 2006

Hi Roger,

Last weekend I’ve been testing the TH2G on my hackintosh (a Shuttle SN95G5 AMD64 machine with Opteron chip and x1600 ATI card inside).

I’m running a 3840 x 1024 resolution on three screens in OSX 10.4.5 without any problems. R U sure the videocard is the problem not the VGA cable length used? For instance I’ve tested various VGA cable lengths: with a 15 m VGA cable connected to each output of the TH2G the maximum output is 2400x 600 for three screens. A higher resolution makes the output corrupted. The shorter the cable used the higher the output possible!

I hope I’ve been of some help. Feel free to email me for questions.

Left by ECH3L0N on October 25th, 2006

Hi Roger,

Have u tried using the TH2G on your Macbook Pro running Windows XP?

Only way I can bring my beloved Mac into my office is if it supports dual/triple display running windows.

Thanks!

Left by wapstar on November 9th, 2006

[...] We’ve had a couple of people in the CDM Forums asking about multi-screen projections and video installations. It’s a logical progression for advanced projects – there aren’t many things which won’t look considerably more awesome if spread over multiple screens – but hasn’t really been an option thus far in Processing, unless you were to go the hardware multiple-monitor route. [...]

Left by Create Digital Motion » Processing Awesomeness on Video: Shiffman’s “Most Pixels Ever” Multi-Monitor Library, Look inside ITP on March 6th, 2007

can you explain a litle better the clone mode?
if it clone my powerbook dvi output across all three monitors at the same time making 3 monitors equal opr not
hugs bernardo

Left by bernardo.amorim on September 14th, 2007

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