Using Resolume or MadMapper video with LED Strip Studio and Spout

What is Spout video routing #

Spout is a Windows video routing (or sharing/streaming) library that enables multiple applications to stream video to one another. It’s incredibly fast because it operates directly on the graphics card. Spout is a popular choice for streaming video from applications like Resolume Arena, MadMapper, TouchDesigner, and many more.

How to enable Spout in Resolume Arena #

It’s pretty straightforward. Simply go to the Output menu and enable Texture Sharing (Spout). A green dot indicator will confirm that Spout is enabled and actively sending video.

How to use Spout in LED Strip Studio #

Spout is just another video layer in LED Strip Studio video scene. To use it, simply add a new video scene and then add a new layer called Spout. You’ll immediately see a list of available Spout streams. Once you select one, LED Strip Studio will start receiving the video content and display it on your mapping.

Since Spout is just another type of video layer, you can use it in a music-synchronized show or activate multiple Spout streams simultaneously.

Spout Stream Not Working in LED Strip Studio? #

On dual-graphics computers, typically notebooks, Spout can encounter issues. The sender and receiver software must run on the same graphics card. By default, Windows manages which graphics card runs the software, and since LED Strip Studio is not very demanding, it sometimes runs on the slower, less power-hungry graphics card.

To ensure both LED Strip Studio and the sender software (like Arena or MadMapper) run on the same graphics card, follow these steps:

1. Open Display Settings in Windows.
2. Go to System -> Display -> Graphics Settings.
3. Add the application manually and specify which graphics card it should use.
4. Typically, you want to run both LED Strip Studio and Arena on the high-performance graphics card.

Performance #

The benefit of using Spout video routing is its simplicity and performance. Once enabled, it just works seamlessly, with no noticeable delay between the frames displayed in Resolume Arena and LED Strip Studio. While video mapping software often supports direct Art-Net mapping to LEDs, the performance can be lacking.

In our experience, using LED Strip Studio software with LEC3 devices and its advanced mapping capabilities, combined with receiving video content over Spout, is far superior. This setup can handle up to 200,000 individual RGB pixels without any issues also thanks to real-time data compression between LED Strip Studio and LEC3 devices.