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I don't understand why you're so combative about this. You say "professionals never do this", but lots of people are telling you that sometimes they do. Perhaps

by dave78 5y ago

I don't understand why you're so combative about this. You say "professionals never do this", but lots of people are telling you that sometimes they do. Perhaps it's time to consider that your experience is not universal? In the cases I've been involved with, the computers generating the displays came from the clients, though the production company also used Macs with Powerpoint for creating lower-thirds for IMAG. The client-provided computers were running a custom software application designed for displaying data on a secondary screen. I'm not even sure if Decklink can even do that as the software just expects to output to a secondary display (it does not know anything about Decklink). Here is a picture of one such event: https://media.beam.usnews.com/7e/1e/aecd818e4128ab67593583079871/160429-first10-editorial.JPG https://media.beam.usnews.com/7e/1e/aecd818e4128ab6759358307...

dkonofalski 5y ago
I'm not being combative and you're (I'm guessing purposely) leaving out parts of my statements to try and argue a point I've never made. I know my experience isn't universal but, by definition, if people are saying that a dot in the corner of the display makes their setup "unusable" then their setup has always been unusable because the OS has access to put things on their display at any time. If the computers came from the clients, then the clients didn't care whether something might pop-up on accident. There's literally no way for someone on the production side to prevent that with a computer that they don't know the ins-and-outs of so it cannot be an issue so that's not the type of situation that I'm talking about. I'm only talking about the people who are saying that this dot makes a Macbook "unusable" for the purpose of display. That's 100% not true and anyone that needs that level of precision, as a professional, uses dedicated I/O hardware to keep exactly that from happening.
- dave78 5y ago
  > That's 100% not true I don't know what else to say. I work with people who put on live shows for 20,000+, they use PCs and Macs to drive the display WITHOUT Decklink or similar, and they would be upset if there was a persistent orange dot on the screen. If you want to split hairs about whether or not that makes the new macOS "unusable" in these situations, then fine, but in the environment I'm familiar with it would not be tolerated. They would replace the Mac device with a PC which doesn't have this issue because they would deem it unusable, even though it can technically still display images on a screen. And despite your repeated comments on this article, it IS possible to configure a PC to not show any notifications for use in a live show, between a combination of changing OS settings, closing unneeded programs, and using the fullscreen APIs of the OS. This is something that can be done ahead of time and tested. I've written software that shows fullscreen on secondary displays on large projectors for presentation-like purposes and I have never had an OS notification pop up over the fullscreen software on a secondary display, even on other people's machines where they didn't take care to shut down programs and turn off notifications. Other commenters here seem to have similar experiences.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    You don't know what else to say and I don't know what else to tell you. Those people would also be upset if anything else outside of a dot popped up on their display, wouldn't they? Or are they just against dots for some reason? Hardware I/O devices exist for precisely this reason. They literally only exist to be able to control what gets output outside of the OS. Just because you personally never had an OS alert or something else pop-up doesn't mean it's not possible or that it doesn't happen. It does happen, usually unintentionally. That's why we have I/O devices.
    - radus 5y ago
      Here's what it boils down to: notifications = low probability orange dot = 100% The risk of an embarrassing notification got traded for the certainty of the orange dot.
      - rasz 5y ago
        alt tabbing by accident to a folder full of goat pr0n thumbnails = quite routine in schools/during presentations
      - dkonofalski 5y ago
        It's not 100% unless you're using an input to record audio and then it's there for a reason. 99% of the people in these threads aren't going to see this during their PowerPoints because they're not recording anything and the 1% that do and care about the dot should be using a hardware I/O device anyways because the OS can do a lot more than just display a dot. Additionally, applications can also fix this themselves by using Apple's APIs.
labcomputer 5y ago
> I don't understand why you're so combative about this. You say "professionals never do this", but lots of people are telling you that sometimes they do. For what its worth, from someone who doesn't work in this space, there's something really confusing to me: This thread is about professionals who: 1. Are displaying visuals at venues with million dollar A/V hardware budgets. 2. For which an orange dot (or anything other than pixel-perfect outputs) is a complete showstopper. 3. Who can't afford a $100 dongle mentioned upthread to output pixel-perfect graphics from their Macs. I'm with you right up until point #3, but I'm really struggling with the last bit. $100 doesn't even sound like "prosumer" money to me. If $100 is really a show stopper for your million dollar business, you need to charge more.
- dave78 5y ago
  The root of the issue is that things were working fine before this change for the particular use case of computers hooked up to A/V equipment. Perhaps a $100 dongle can fix it, but the point is that the $100 device wasn't needed before - people were happy with the way it was (again, for this use case - I see the value in the dot for other use cases obviously). Furthermore, while I'm not an expert on these $100 dongles, my understanding is that they do not present as just another monitor (since that would defeat the purpose). Thus, you cannot just show anything on their outputs that you could otherwise show on a monitor, right? My understanding is the application has to be written specifically to output to the Decklink (but I may very well be wrong on this) - if that's the case then the $100 dongle does not fix every situation here since a lot of things that get presented may not support it.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    >people were happy with the way it was Apparently not because the OS has always been able to do this. They're just not happy because the OS has now chosen something that they disagree with. Ignorance of the limitations is not the same as being "happy with the way it was" even if ignorance is bliss. >written specifically to output to the Decklink With the DeckLink specifically, yes. That's a choice made by Blackmagic, though. There are other I/O devices that let you output any window's content (like OBS does with its virtual cameras).

by dave78 5y ago

dkonofalski 5y ago

I'm not being combative and you're (I'm guessing purposely) leaving out parts of my statements to try and argue a point I've never made. I know my experience isn't universal but, by definition, if people are saying that a dot in the corner of the display makes their setup "unusable" then their setup has always been unusable because the OS has access to put things on their display at any time. If the computers came from the clients, then the clients didn't care whether something might pop-up on accident. There's literally no way for someone on the production side to prevent that with a computer that they don't know the ins-and-outs of so it cannot be an issue so that's not the type of situation that I'm talking about. I'm only talking about the people who are saying that this dot makes a Macbook "unusable" for the purpose of display. That's 100% not true and anyone that needs that level of precision, as a professional, uses dedicated I/O hardware to keep exactly that from happening.

dave78 5y ago
> That's 100% not true I don't know what else to say. I work with people who put on live shows for 20,000+, they use PCs and Macs to drive the display WITHOUT Decklink or similar, and they would be upset if there was a persistent orange dot on the screen. If you want to split hairs about whether or not that makes the new macOS "unusable" in these situations, then fine, but in the environment I'm familiar with it would not be tolerated. They would replace the Mac device with a PC which doesn't have this issue because they would deem it unusable, even though it can technically still display images on a screen. And despite your repeated comments on this article, it IS possible to configure a PC to not show any notifications for use in a live show, between a combination of changing OS settings, closing unneeded programs, and using the fullscreen APIs of the OS. This is something that can be done ahead of time and tested. I've written software that shows fullscreen on secondary displays on large projectors for presentation-like purposes and I have never had an OS notification pop up over the fullscreen software on a secondary display, even on other people's machines where they didn't take care to shut down programs and turn off notifications. Other commenters here seem to have similar experiences.
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  You don't know what else to say and I don't know what else to tell you. Those people would also be upset if anything else outside of a dot popped up on their display, wouldn't they? Or are they just against dots for some reason? Hardware I/O devices exist for precisely this reason. They literally only exist to be able to control what gets output outside of the OS. Just because you personally never had an OS alert or something else pop-up doesn't mean it's not possible or that it doesn't happen. It does happen, usually unintentionally. That's why we have I/O devices.
  - radus 5y ago
    Here's what it boils down to: notifications = low probability orange dot = 100% The risk of an embarrassing notification got traded for the certainty of the orange dot.
    - rasz 5y ago
      alt tabbing by accident to a folder full of goat pr0n thumbnails = quite routine in schools/during presentations
    - dkonofalski 5y ago
      It's not 100% unless you're using an input to record audio and then it's there for a reason. 99% of the people in these threads aren't going to see this during their PowerPoints because they're not recording anything and the 1% that do and care about the dot should be using a hardware I/O device anyways because the OS can do a lot more than just display a dot. Additionally, applications can also fix this themselves by using Apple's APIs.

labcomputer 5y ago

> I don't understand why you're so combative about this. You say "professionals never do this", but lots of people are telling you that sometimes they do. For what its worth, from someone who doesn't work in this space, there's something really confusing to me: This thread is about professionals who: 1. Are displaying visuals at venues with million dollar A/V hardware budgets. 2. For which an orange dot (or anything other than pixel-perfect outputs) is a complete showstopper. 3. Who can't afford a $100 dongle mentioned upthread to output pixel-perfect graphics from their Macs. I'm with you right up until point #3, but I'm really struggling with the last bit. $100 doesn't even sound like "prosumer" money to me. If $100 is really a show stopper for your million dollar business, you need to charge more.

dave78 5y ago
The root of the issue is that things were working fine before this change for the particular use case of computers hooked up to A/V equipment. Perhaps a $100 dongle can fix it, but the point is that the $100 device wasn't needed before - people were happy with the way it was (again, for this use case - I see the value in the dot for other use cases obviously). Furthermore, while I'm not an expert on these $100 dongles, my understanding is that they do not present as just another monitor (since that would defeat the purpose). Thus, you cannot just show anything on their outputs that you could otherwise show on a monitor, right? My understanding is the application has to be written specifically to output to the Decklink (but I may very well be wrong on this) - if that's the case then the $100 dongle does not fix every situation here since a lot of things that get presented may not support it.
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  >people were happy with the way it was Apparently not because the OS has always been able to do this. They're just not happy because the OS has now chosen something that they disagree with. Ignorance of the limitations is not the same as being "happy with the way it was" even if ignorance is bliss. >written specifically to output to the Decklink With the DeckLink specifically, yes. That's a choice made by Blackmagic, though. There are other I/O devices that let you output any window's content (like OBS does with its virtual cameras).