Although the Armed column provides an indication of content that is ready to be played out, it is not an accurate preview. For an accurate Viz Engine preview of the content, you must configure preview on an external Viz Engine.

Before You Begin

Depending on how much hardware you have available, the preview can be a simple VGA version of the Viz Engine (without clip playback), or a Video Engine with Matrox hardware for live input and clip playback. The accuracy of the preview depends on how close the Preview configuration is to the one for Program.

Further considerations:

  • The Preview Wall has no use without the Armed column (1-tap mode).

  • The Program and Preview engines can have different resolution, but need the same aspect.

  • You can preview live sources if your preview engine is a video-enabled Viz Engine with a Matrox video card. The SDI in signals must then be split to go into both the video wall and the preview engine.

  • Although mainly used for testing, since its local preview function (reading pages) and the video wall preview will conflict, Viz Trio’s local Viz preview can also be used as an external preview. The engines should have the same aspect. 

  • The Preview Wall must have at least as many channels as the Program.

Info: The data model behind the Viz Multiplay representation of the channels in the presets (the virtual areas of the video wall) used to communicate with Viz Engine is based on percentage, even if the units in the GUI is pixels. This means that presets are compatible between a preview wall and a program wall with different resolutions. It also means that presets from one wall can be used on another video wall, as long as the aspect is the same.

Setting Up and Using External Preview

To set up a video wall system with Program and Preview engines, two video walls need to be created in the Profile. Remember that the Viz Engines need to be up and On Air.

First you need to create the preview wall:

  1. Click Settings > Profiles, and select the Profile.

  2. Create a new video wall Preview Wall, this is used as the Preview Wall. 

  3. Click OK.

  4. Create another video wall, this is used as the Program Wall.

  5. Select your newly created preview wall in the External Preview combo box.

  6. Click OK.

Note: The channels of the Preview Wall are not visible in the main playout GUI in Viz Multiplay.

Preview Wall Behavior

The Preview Wall shows a preview of what would be On Air if the user executed Take All.

This usually means the Armed content, but the logic considers that Presets won’t overwrite content on empty channels, therefore the actual preview of a Video Wall is often a mix of Program and Armed content.

Info: This logic can be reverted to the previous version, where Viz Multiplay simply Takes everything on Preview that has been Armed. Check General Settings.

Using Continue

The Armed column can be configured to use an extra button, CONTINUE. In this case, whenever an element with stop points is armed and is taken on preview engine, clicking CONTINUE continues the element on the preview engine. This way, you can preview a full sequence of stop points in a graphics on the preview engine before it is taken On Air in the program engine. See Extra Armed Button.