Hi, everybody,
I’m new on casparcg and I can not understand from the little documentation available if this is really the product I need, I have to make a recording studio for 48 sdi 3g signals record all these signals and display them on a videowall or on twelve 4k monitors divided into four screens to view the live feed of all the cams and manage from a single location the replay of any of the 48 cameras.
I have the budget to do this studio, but I still don’t know how to choose the right product, I’ve read very positive comments on this software and seen videos and photos of director booths very similar to mine.
only annotation, I don’t have to do direct production, I just have to record all the sources and have the replay at hand (I don’t need it instantaneously, even if it’s accessible after 1 minute it’s ok anyway).
you can please contact me here, or at my email marco [dot] lanini [at] flashinlabs [dot] com
Hope you have a good budget for that, the replay will be the biggest part of your budget. You should take something on this scale to a professional broadcast integrator. On this scale moving everything to IP is also the most sensible and versatile solution.
It would be helpful to understand the use case better. What is the content of these 48 signals that you record? Do they need to be synchronized? Is it kind of a video referee system or something completely different?
Hi, thanks for the answer,
the system is a display system with videowall, signal recording and replay in case of accident for a race circuit where there are many curves and escape routes that are constantly monitored by the race director and the commissioners when there are official events.
at the moment the system works with an obsolete software that records in PAL with an array of 12 pc, each with 4 blackmagic intensity pro cards that record from the composite channel
I see, so the recorded material is only needed to investigate accidents afterwards and not for any kind of instant replay, as the race directors monitor the events live and take action from that, right?
That could be done with Caspar. But I would probably suggest a solution that is not PC based. There are cheap multiviewer devices, from BMD and others, that could be used for the monitoring. They are hardware based and will not easily crash for a weird Windows reason 
And the recording could be done by Hyperdecks.
In the end it‘s a security system, that could put lifes in danger when failing and so I would not want to do experiments…
I understand your point of view, and I assure you that the client has already assessed the risk factor, the system should be built redundant and linux is a viable option for recording machines. as said, to date the system is served by a Windows software that records in SD for almost 10 years now and moreover the cameras are positioned (48 cameras per 5 km of track) in order to be redundant and are connected 4 for each server to avoid any loss of vision in case of failures of any recording machine; and that anyway the lives of the drivers do not depend on these recordings, but on the track commissioners and doctors who go to help them.
Returning to the project, the system will have to be calibrated for recording 24h on 24h for 5 consecutive days to then go to store in an external storage the clips of the events and possibly the official races in full (so clips will be made of the total duration of the event instead of the single episode).
if possible (but as first option a quad split hardware display system will be used) we would also like to evaluate the possibility to use the system as a videowall manager with all the cameras on screen, exactly like in [this picture]
the solution via IP is not viable precisely because the recording is not prioritized over the vision by the race commissioners, the whole system must be SDI and the signals will be managed by a distributor who will send the video on the monitors and then to the recording system.
as I said in the previous answer, a welcome option, to use as an alternative video source for the ledwall (and then switch to the hardware version in case of software failure) is to have the display managed by the software with boxes and labels to improve the appearance and readability of the track for the marshals.
I don‘t think that you got my point I am not against a PC based solution, I just think it would be worth considering a hardware based solution also. As (hardware based) broadcast gear has become cheaper in the last few years. To be able to record 5760 hours of video with any PC based system you need an awefull lot of performance and disk space. And to off load that for archival will also be a challenge.
But from your website I see, that you are a Computer company, and so I understand, why my point is unpopular.
Did you find a solution for this problem yet? It not, do you need to be able to keep recording while playing back a section of the footage? Also, is playback happening to multiple camera sets at one time?