Led screen + CasparCG hardware and setup

Hello people!
I am planning to use casparcg to send some sport graphics to a maxi screen.
I m in the process to understand the hardware needed, so I hope that some of you that got experience on it could give me some tips.
By what I read, I will have to buy an outdoor led module plus a video processor and a sender box.
Then send by caspar the gfx.
The question is can NDI be used to send directly the image to the screen bypassing sender box and videoprocessor?
Sorry if I am writing nonsense, i am trying to learn in the process eheh.
Thanks

Depending on what screen is used you could probably skip some steps.
The video controller to the actual led-screen I do not think is feasible to skip.

What hardware do you have today? Or is it a blank slate?

Caspar should probably be used as an input into some processor where you blend different content. Depending of course what type of content will be displayed. Is it live video or a billboard?

AFAIK these video processors are needed to convert a video input (may be SDI HDMI or probably NDI) into something that the LED modules can use. They do the scaling/tiling etc. Dependent of the used wall modules you may be able to send HDMI directly to them. So you could do the scaling and tiling inside Caspar and send multiple signals to the individual screens. But in the end you run a HUGE Caspar server machine with a lot of Decklinks and maybe the video processor is cheaper than such a big machine. And you would need to put that Caspar close to the video wall as HDMI signals are not so easy to send over long distances.

So I would go with the conventional approach and ask a company specialized in building video walls for help. Also many event companies have such systems for rent.

Blank project atm.
Mostly billboard but we should be able to send a video if needed (commercial).

Yes it is my understanding too that a kind of further conversion is still needed unfortunately.
Rental prices are higher than buy the hardware in case of small solutions for finish arches and so on. That is why i would like it in house.
I will follow your suggestion and directly contact the producers!

The best route is to set up a local CasparCG PC with screen consumer (custom resolution) with the exact physical LED resolution.
You output it to HDMI and input that into a sending card (Novastar/Linsn) Sending cards display on screen the unscaled input (HDMI/DVI) from the top left.
If you want to separate the server and and LED screen, you can do the same thing, but instead use the server as a NDI receiver but it’s redundant and unnecessary.
The only requirements it this case are:

  • Dedicated GPU with 2 outputs
  • Sending card (can be internal, powered by a molex connector)

Another route is to do SDI out to an LED processor and do the scaling there.

thanks alot!
I will update this as soon I will get hands on a screen and give a feedback!

I am a bit cautious about using screen cosumers because there’s (in my mind at least) a big risk of the actual windows screen getting closed, minimized, or something appearing on top, be it accidentally by the person or by some Windows random event.

How do you usually minimize this risk?

I would not do that also. - But there are tools (Google) that can di a fence on your desktop, so that the mouse cannot go in that area. I think I once did it like that.

Never -ever- actually clone the desktop for use on digital signage.
A better way is to do a second display with a windowed always-on-top screen consumer positioned in the second display. Make sure the main display is the actual GPU first output (so the bios and windows desktop/taskbar won’t show up on boot) and also disable all windows desktop enhancements (aero peek)
On top of that, you can use Quadro/RTX (non GeForce) graphic cards that let you force an EDID for each output so you won’t have problems with monitors disconnecting.
That PC should be treated as headless anyways as it is a media server, not a workstation.