Month: June 2021

PLAYDECK supports most Amazon EC2 server instances and the NVidia GPU Power they provide. This allows you to setup a cloud based infrastructure for NDI transport or other purposes.

We assume, you have a Amazon AWS Account and basic knowledge of EC2.

First, you pick a new EC2 instance, which supports a PLAYDECK installation:
Windows Server with a virtual NVIDIA GPU and pre-installed NVIDIA driver:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/install-nvidia-driver.html#preinstalled-nvidia-driver

A typical instance would be “Windows 2019 / g4dn.xlarge” – It has a Tesla virtual NVIDIA GPU and good enough Specs to run PLAYDECK: 16 vCPUs (Intel Xeon), 64GB RAM, 1 vGPU (NVidia T4) with 16GB GPU RAM.

Now install the Instance via those Links or your EC2 Management Console.

To connect to the instance via RDP you first have to open Port 3389 in the Instance Security Settings.

Once connected, you find yourself unable to download anything via the Browser. Therefore enable Downloads like this: START Menu > Server Manager > Local Server > IE Enhanced Security Configuration > Off

Now download and install PLAYDECK as usual:
https://playdeck.tv/download/

This can be achieved via any supported output card, which supports internal keying.
For this example we use the “Decklink Duo 2”. In PLAYDECK this sample will look like this:

Configure Decklink for Internal Keying

Open the Decklink setup utility “Desktop Video Setup” and set SDI 1+2 like this. This will be used for internal keying, where SDI 1 will receive the video signal from Playlist 1 and will key Playlist 2 over it and output the combined video via SDI 2.

Now you setup SDI 3 as standalone without keying. This will be used to send the video signal from Playlist 1 to Playlist 2 via SDI Loop.

Decklink SDI connections (Loop Cable and Output)

Use a short SDI cable and connect SDI 3 directly with SDI 1. We use this to feed the Playlist 1 signal via SDI 3 into the keying input SDI 1. Connect your final mixed output to SDI 2.

Setup PLAYDECK für Internal Keying

Channel 1 will send the video signal via SDI 3 to SDI 1 for mixing. Therefore you output Channel 1 like normal:

Channel 2 will receive the video layer on SDI 1. Now let PLAYDECK tell the Decklink to use Internal Keying to mix the Channel 2 signal over the one coming via SDI 1. Your final mixed output will be send to SDI 2.