hello, Zoe.

by rsmck

Another tool that I made for myself (or, rather, for another theatre company) that I've made available to anyone who might find it useful is Zoe Media Server.

It is not, and doesn't try to be, an alternative to Disguise, Hippotizer, Avolites Ai, MediaMaster or anything similar. Think of it as a simple digital slide projector with control by sACN, with a few bells and whistles designed for 'digital backdrops' rather than full-featured media presentations.

The user interface is as simple as it can be, there is a library of up to 255 'slides' - these can be either videos or photos that can be selected from the lighting desk later by sACN.

Just drag your media into the appropriate pigeonhole. Right click to remove any of them.

Probably the simplest media server you'll find.

Zoe Media Server has four layers of content, you can load any of the media to any of the four layers and apply some transformations on a per-layer basis.

It works at HD (1920x1080). It'll scale that to fit any output display you provide, but internally everything is processed at 1920x1080. Why? Because that's what I needed at the time. It may evolve in the future.

Also, it supports a single output. If you want another one just now, use another Mac ;-)

Layers

There are four layers of content, for each of them you can select an image and then adjust the following parameters and transformations over sACN that allow for adjusting the image, as well as some colour and transformation effects.  

  • Intensity
  • Red, Green, and Blue Levels individually
  • Playback Speed and Looping
  • Hue, Saturation, Contrast, and Blur (Defocus)
  • Scale/Zoom (from 0% to 200%)
  • X/Y Position
  • Crop and Rotate

Master Control

In addition to the controls per video layer, the master controls include

  • Intensity
  • Scale and Position
  • Crop and Rotate
  • Full four-point keystone adjustment

Anyway, it's freely available, you might find it useful, you might not, but if you do - let me know!