Display Builder app Documentation

v4

Display Builder

Overview

Display Builder is an application designed to help with the rapid setup of multi-channel projects in media server software.

Configuring arrays of overlapping displays for video wall applications by hand can be tedious and error-prone, so I created this utility to make the process faster and easier. Originally designed for the calculation of softedged projections for mapping projects, it can also be used with a negative overlap for walls of flat-screen displays or LED panels.

Licence

This software is distributed under the terms of the ISC licence: http://opensource.org/licenses/ISC
Please see the licence terms in the separate LICENCE.txt file.

System Requirements & Installation

Display Builder is a Java application and the download includes the required Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

Minimum display resolution: 1280x720 pixels. Minimum memory required: 512Mb.

macOS: Requires macOS 10.14 or higher (separate builds for x64 and Apple Silicon are available)

Windows: Built and tested on Windows 10.

Installation

Simply extract the zip archive to a suitable place on your hard-drive and launch the application. The application itself is not signed by a developer - on macOS, you will need to authorise the app in System Preferences - Security and Privacy before launching it the first time.

Using Display Builder

The principle element in the application is the Display - which may be called an output or projector in other software packages.

Displays are managed using Display Groups, which contain multiple columns and rows of Displays with the same characteristics. To add Displays with different resolutions, physical sizes or orientations, add a new Display Group and configure the Displays as desired. Groups can be positioned relative to the stage, or to another group. The currently selected Display Group is highlighted on screen - click on another group to select it.

Enter the physical dimensions of a Display will calculate the physical area of the projection surface. After setting the physical scale of the first Display Group, modifying the size of Displays in subsequent groups will calculate their relative size (or stage size on Watchout). This allows the use of Displays with the same pixel resolution but different physical dimensions (e.g. 2 HD monitors with different screen sizes). Once physical dimensions are entered, a physical reference grid image can be exported.

Guides can used to aid Display layout. Background images can be imported. Guide lines can be added at precise positions and included in exported lineup images as a reference.

Project files can save your Display layouts for reuse. When loading files, you may overwrite (replace) or append (add- to) the current project.

Once completed, Display layouts data can be exported in various formats for use in different media-server software. Lineup grid images can also be generated to aid projector alignment and as a reference for content creation.

Interface Controls

Most numeric input fields allow simple maths expressions: e.g. 1920 + 360 or 3840 * 1.25.

Some fields can accept physical units - e.g. 2.5m - and will convert the value to pixels.

Supported units for physical units are ‘m’, ‘ft’ & ‘in’, but physical dimensions are stored and displayed as metric values.

Hovering with the mouse over most UI controls will show a pop-up with more detailed information about its function. For more information, see the detailed description of each control in the other pages of this document .

Keyboard Shortcuts

General:

  • Tab selects the next UI tab.
  • Hold the Spacebar or the middle-mouse-button and click to drag around the on-screen work area.
  • i key to use the measurement tool (like the Eyedropper/Ruler tool in Photoshop).
  • Use the X and Y keys to switch between the X (horizontal) and Y (vertical) axes.

Transforms:

Some elements can be moved, rotated and scaled using the following shortcuts.

  • G to Grab (or Move).
  • M to Move.
  • R to Rotate.
  • S to Scale.

To cancel the transform currently in progress, hit the Spacebar, or select a different tool, before releasing the mouse.

Acknowledgments:

Built with Processing: http://processing.org/

Watchout is a trademark of Dataton AB, Sweden: http://www.dataton.com/

Modulo Kinetic is a product by Modulo Pi, France: https://www.modulo-pi.com

Disguise is a product by Disguise, UK: https://www.disguise.one/