coolux to Present New Pandoras Box Compact Player and the Latest Pandoras Box Version 5.7 Software at ISE2015

Since its official launch at last year’s ISE, the Compact Player has become an international success story and is now being used worldwide in a great number of integrated installation setups, including cruise ships, museums and art installations.

The Compact Player’s Playlist feature makes it very easy to play back multiple media files in a row without the need of programming separate containers on a timeline sequence.

A new software update, which will be released shortly after the ISE, will add an additional timeline sequence to the Compact Player’s capabilities, due to popular demand.

coolux Marketing Specialist Hans Stucken shines some light on the initial reception of the Compact Player.

“When we launched the first version of the Pandoras Box Compact Player, quite a few people told us that there was no real market for a premium hardware player. We begged to differ. Our own expectations for this exciting product were not only met, but were massively surpassed. We believe that in addition to the reliability of the product, the key themes of synchronisation and interactivity played an important role in making this product such a great success.”

Visitors to the coolux booth will also be able to take a first hand look at the latest Pandoras Box software version 5.7, which will be presented using the recently released Pandoras Box R3 hardware revision.

Some of the key differences in terms of the new hardware’s performance are the extended live video input capabilities with up to 4x 3G SDI Input or 8x HD 1080p Input, as well as an increased number of HD streams and image sequences that can be output simultaneously.

The Pandoras Box Version 5.7 includes the following features:

Venue Sites
“Venue Sites” are used for visualising complete stage-, installation- and show-setups in real-time, using 3D models.

Media content can be pre-programmed per output and can then be routed to different 3D models this way.

What is special about “Venue Sites” is that instead of just offering a standard 3D mapping approach for pre-visualisation, one can now use a real-time compositing environment as a complete whole to simulate video projectors virtually, using a light projection approach.

Media content and content compositing can be used completely independently from the visualised 3D scenes.

The ability to seamlessly switch from one Venue Site to another makes comparing different design scenarios very easy and helps to save valuable time and costs.

Another important aspect of “Venue Sites” relates to being able to test and play around with the simulations of complex media installations. This way, one can for example train oneself to set up a spherical projection or a softedge projection without having to use real projectors in the process.

New Text Input
Pandoras Box users will also be delighted to discover that version 5.7 includes a completely re-designed text editor.

Different font styles can now be used within a single text asset. An automatic horizontal and vertical scrolling capability is also part of this crucial tool’s latest development.

When working with the new text editor, one can even use and  add an unlimited amount of text to a continuous text stream.

Advanced ASIO and HD-SDI Audio Routing
The latest Pandoras Box audio feature development makes it possible to input ASIO sound as well as HD-SDI embedded audio, opening up a whole new world of real-time media compositing.

Users can route, delay and record ASIO inputs. Sound data can be used on ASIO tracks and programmed to the timeline, including different delays for different output signal chains.

Audio inputs can now be arranged on any Pandoras Box timeline, or can alternatively be triggered via external commands.

In addition to these major features, a whole range of helpful improvements for a "Pixel-Oriented Workflow" were integrated as well, in order to reflect the Pandoras Box’s true pixel accuracy even more.

Users can now decide to scale all content to the native resolution, even across several machines and across different resolutions. Pixels can be entered directly into the interface, in order to position layers and cameras. These settings can then also be applied directly by creating a new project without any further user action being necessary.

Using this decidedly "Pixel-Oriented Workflow" makes it easy to set up and use split pictures, and also aids the communication flow between operators and content designers, who are used to thinking in terms of pixel values.