Compere for Juggler Systems

Juggler

Juggler is not just a standalone rack module. We imagine it as stage performer in an event, where as many Jugglers and other performers as you want can join, take part, or leave, all under the direction of a Compere, or stage manager that holds the event together.

Juggler is a modular hardware base for full high bit-depth pixel-based colour processing, warp and blend. Its main component board is a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), which makes it extremely versatile for performing highly specialised processing tasks. It accepts a scalable number of inputs and delivers a scalable number of outputs, in many protocols. 2D, passive and active stereo 3D are fully supported.

With latency reduced to an absolute minimum, Juggler is ideal for live performance. All sources can be genlocked for frame accuracy, with instant system failover across all connected devices via frame-data monitoring (an API is available for third-party sources).

➢See the user guide: Operating Juggler 1 Pixel Processor

Compere

Compere (pronounced ‘KOM pair’) is the software system that manages all Juggler connections in a ‘stage set’ (we call it the Project Group), defines inputs, outputs and manages displays. A version of Compere runs in every Juggler on a Linux OS that drives the front panel touch display and communicates with the FPGA.

Compere provides the user interface (UI) for a Juggler system. Here you create Project Groups of Jugglers and configure all the inputs and outputs of each Juggler involved. All group activity can then be managed via external control from multiple network points.

Compere does much more, but for configuring your Juggler system with its media inputs and display outputs, you need to become familiar with the Juggler side of Compere.

Connect up your hardware before you venture into Compere. Once that is done, connect into the system from a workstation control PC with Compere running, and every part of the system will be recognised and identified, along with all their available ports, in order to create the relationships between each Juggler, their input sources and output devices.

Projects and Groups

Projects are a bit like stage sets, with scenery and equipment ready for a play or show. When you create or see a Project in Compere, you will see a list of what belongs together for the ‘stage set’: Jugglers, displays, media devices, projectors, 3D models and so on, that are assigned as a Project Group.

All the details and settings are held in the Project file, which governs how every member of the Project Group behaves. Whichever instance of the Compere software takes control (the one assigned as server), like a stage manager, coordinates and distributes this set of stage instructions to all instances of Compere, which includes every Juggler in the Group. If any of these members, as clients, wants to make changes at any time, the changes are handed back to the server to redistribute around the Group.

Any client joining the Project Group is handed the common current Project file and performs as directed. In this way any PC running Compere on the network can join the Project Group, become the server or stay as a client and interact with the rest of the Group. This might be to make static changes in the ‘stage set’ or to move things around dynamically, such as picture-in-picture elements.

If network connection is lost by any Juggler in a Project Group, the local copy of the Project will keep running until it can reconnect and re-sync with the Group, at which point any changes to the Project file will be received from the assigned (or a reassigned) server.

Simultaneous Editing of a Project

Any instance of Compere can edit the Project configuration, save it locally and then redistribute it to all Compere clients. This is a powerful feature of Compere, giving multiple users the potential to accomplish large-scale tasks much faster. A good example of this would be one user using an instance of Compere to warp one side of a projection surface while another, using a separate instance connected to the same project, warps the other side.

The wider network

There can be more than one Project Group, each with an assigned server to coordinate it. They can all be on the same network, and any member can be moved from one Group to another as required. If you need other Groups, they can be created and named, and available members assigned to them instead of the initial default (unnamed) Group.

For more about the system architecture of Juggler systems, see:

➢Operating Juggler 1 Pixel Processor

Page edited [d/m/y]: 26/09/2022