So there are a couple of options, depending on the hardware. If it kicked out HD-SDI you could just patch the display into the coax in the building and have done with it.
But that only worked if you were in the same building and your machine kicked out HD-SDI
Most machines either shat out dual-link DVI or worse, some custom shit. Getting a cable that can reliably transport dual-link DVI >10 meters was difficult and expensive. Worse still, it had a habit of dropping back to single link, or some other failure mode that was everso annoying to debug. More over, 10 meters often isn't far enough. Especially if the room had a projector (so might be >5m long throw.)
Now, thats the simple case. The hard case is multi-building. Say, you have an operator working in london, and the director in new york, you want to give them the highest quality picture possible. The only way to do that at the time was with one of these cards, or some nasty SDI-hardware h264 transcoder (hugely expensive at the time)
I really wish I could remember what they were called. They appear to have fallen out of favour.
Now, you'd just use cynesync, as you're laptop can encode video in real time now (https://www.backlight.co/product/cinesync) Also, rumour has it that the wolverene movie was leaked because a producer got coked up and left an unencypted laptop on a plane, rather than using cynesync to show an edit to someone important. Alas I can't verify that.
I'd love to hear more stories about coked-up producers in the film industry from 15+ years ago. Having done technical codec work adjacent to some of it in the past, it's a wild business to be in.
So there are a couple of options, depending on the hardware. If it kicked out HD-SDI you could just patch the display into the coax in the building and have done with it.
But that only worked if you were in the same building and your machine kicked out HD-SDI
Most machines either shat out dual-link DVI or worse, some custom shit. Getting a cable that can reliably transport dual-link DVI >10 meters was difficult and expensive. Worse still, it had a habit of dropping back to single link, or some other failure mode that was everso annoying to debug. More over, 10 meters often isn't far enough. Especially if the room had a projector (so might be >5m long throw.)
Now, thats the simple case. The hard case is multi-building. Say, you have an operator working in london, and the director in new york, you want to give them the highest quality picture possible. The only way to do that at the time was with one of these cards, or some nasty SDI-hardware h264 transcoder (hugely expensive at the time)
I really wish I could remember what they were called. They appear to have fallen out of favour.
Now, you'd just use cynesync, as you're laptop can encode video in real time now (https://www.backlight.co/product/cinesync) Also, rumour has it that the wolverene movie was leaked because a producer got coked up and left an unencypted laptop on a plane, rather than using cynesync to show an edit to someone important. Alas I can't verify that.