Coolux recently released Pandora’s Box 5.5, an update to its popular media server platform. This update brings some new functionality not found in previous versions as well as some performance and efficiency boosts. Many of these changes and new features come from their user group. Coolux constantly cites user input on developing these new features, and the weight that user input holds in their development.
The most exciting new feature is 3D marker calibration within the Warper tool. When working with content on 3D objects, you can attach markers along vertices of the object. You can then tell the system where these markers fall in real space (on the real object) and have Warper calibrate the camera position to that of the projector with high accuracy. A programmer from Coolux explained, “Markers do 99% of the work; the last 1% is adjusting for the curvature of the lens.” Especially with wide zoom lenses, you get a small fish-eye effect to which markers can’t calibrate. Warper includes several methods to compensate for this. On projectors with a long-throw, this often isn’t even an issue.
Pandora's Box 5.5’s markers are quite similar to the reference points in competitor d3 technologies’ projector calibration tool. They fall somewhere in the middle of d3’s old auto calibration tool and the new quick calibration tool. You have the option to align the markers and click “Update Cal” which makes the alignment (d3’s auto calibration), or you can enable Live Re-Cal, which makes adjustments in real-time (closer to d3’s quick calibration). With Warper, you have all the tools in the same box to adjust for that last 1%, whereas with d3 you need to step out of the calibration and into the feed manager. Not an overly arduous task, but worth noting nonetheless.
Markers are a great tool that give d3 and Pandora’s Box some real competitive advantage compared to other servers in the market. d3’s markers have been in the last couple of versions with a major overhaul early this year in R11. With the time to refine and adjust the tool, d3’s method is a little smoother, but both are quite easy to use and equally effective in the end.
In addition to the marker calibration, 5.5 also sports a new Playlist tool. Playlists allow you to play back a bunch of media files sequentially without needing to individually program each file. This would be useful for shows that are put together on the fly or where you don’t have the tech time to carefully program every clip. The program will also watch all media, whether or not it is in a watch folder. If it detects any changes, it will reload the new content and spread it across the system. Of course, this is a feature that you can turn off to prevent any unsuspected surprises.
Another sharp feature in 5.5 is Watch Folders and Media Monitoring. You can specify a watch folder and as content is placed in it, the content will automatically be added and distributed across the entire system without interrupting your workflow. There are versions of this feature on other media servers, but this improvement takes strides ahead of competitors in this aspect.