Cliqer vs Barco E2: why we left the hardware processor behind

For twenty years the Barco E2 has been the box many productions treat as a must-have. Rent it, rack it, hire the operator who knows it, and the screens will be fine. On a modern corporate event the picture is different: a 31 kg steel processor that blends by hand, lists no warp, adds a frame of processing delay, runs warm, and takes hours of patching for a job software does in seconds.

We build Cliqer, and we run shows. This post explains why we no longer put an E2 in a corporate show, what we use instead (Cliqer Studio for the wall and for everything around it, plus a couple of plain hardware boxes), and where the E2's spec sheet still counts. Every Barco number comes from Barco's own spec sheets and user guide, and every Cliqer claim from our docs.

Cliqer Studio on a Mac: Preview, Program, the switcher, input tiles and the audio mixer.

Long the default, no longer the best fit

Barco's Event Master family is a line of hardware presentation switchers: the E2, E2 Lite and E2 Jr, the S3 and EX expansion units, and the EC consoles. Rental houses flight-case them and production companies put them on every quote, because it has long been the default.

The E2 still does what it was built for. But most of that is now done faster and for less by software on a capable computer and a network, and what the E2 lacks is exactly what a modern corporate stage needs: curved and uneven projection surfaces, quick changes, NDI everywhere, and one crew that can see every source.

Cliqer is the presentation platform we build: a desktop app on Mac and Windows with a live production window called Studio, a stage timer, and phone remotes. For the full tour, read our Studio overview.

What we have seen with an E2 on real shows

These are the problems we have watched happen on large corporate events. We have left out the client, the venue and the people; the pattern is the point.

• Heat. The E2 is a 4U box on 1100 W power supplies, wired with a bundle of HDMI and SDI cables. On one show the HDMI cables on its outputs ran hot to the touch and one failed outright, just before the doors. Two projectors broke up and went black.
• Hand blending on an uneven screen. After that session an operator spent three hours trying to blend the projectors inside the E2. The screen was not flat, and the E2 has no warp, so the blend could not line up. Matching numbers across every projector looked tidy on paper but lost detail in the blacks and the whites on the wall.
• What fixed it. The show was stable once the E2's blends and processing were switched off, so it passed the signal straight through, and the mapping and blending were done in software, where they had been prepared in the first place.
• Hours against seconds. Screen mapping in software takes seconds. On an E2 it takes hours of physical cabling and patching, with far fewer routing options.
• Cost. The processor's rental, its operator and the extra rack and cabling around it cost more per show than a full software kit, and they add no feature the software path lacks.

What Barco's own documents say

Barco's user guide for the Event Master processors sets out the limits.

The Router view of the Outputs window: each output picks its source from a grid, with no cable to move.

Projection mapping: where the gap is widest

A real stage is rarely a flat white rectangle square to the projectors. Screens curve, trusses force an angle, scrims and set pieces break the surface. The E2 only blends straight edges between flat outputs. That suits a perfectly straight projection, and little else.

Cliqer Studio maps first and blends second. Each projector's output takes its own slice of the picture, warped onto the real surface and blended into its neighbour, so what leaves the computer is already finished. Nothing after it has to touch the picture.

It is all in the Projection section of each output in Studio, on the Studio 8K and Enterprise plans, on Mac and on Windows (Projection in the docs):

• Slices. Each output shows its own part of the source. A slice map shows every output as a coloured box, with hatched bands where two overlap.
• Corners. Pin the four corners of a display output on the output itself, nudged a pixel at a time.
• Warp grid. A grid of up to 9 by 9 points, with straight or Bezier curves, bends the picture onto a curved or uneven screen. On a Bezier grid each point has its own handles.
• Edge blend from the overlap. Turn Edge Blend on and Cliqer works out the fade from where the slices overlap. You do not draw each ramp by hand. Gamma for red, green and blue, power and luminance shape the fade so the overlap matches the rest of the picture.
• Black level. Lifts the black outside the overlap, with a black zone and a trim at each corner, so the double black where two projectors overlap does not show as a lighter band.
• Masks. Up to eight shaped masks, inverted to cut a hole and feathered, for set pieces and scrims.
• Trim. Red, green, blue, brightness and contrast per slice, to match a projector fighting ambient light.

Planning the room? Stage is a 3D window where you import the venue model, place screens, projectors and cameras, and watch your outputs play live on them before you are on site.

Pointing an output at a connected display. Projection sits further down the same Setup sheet.

How we build a corporate show without an E2

We split the system in two with one question: does this picture need zero latency?

The hardware path. Cliqer Studio drives the wall from a main and a backup computer. Each projector's output leaves already mapped and blended. An HDMI switcher picks main or backup, and a matrix sends each feed to its projector or to the LED. Those boxes do not process the picture, so they add no frame of delay, and there is nothing in them to set up by hand. Nothing after Studio waits for a network. It does the E2's job on the wall.

The NDI network. Everything else rides a network: 100G switches, a main and a spare, and good WiFi. Think of the switches as the "invisible E2": unlimited inputs and outputs, no physical patching. The presentation laptops run Cliqer for slide control and send the timer as the Cliqer Timer NDI source. A Cliqer Studio computer for the NDI layer takes in every NDI source on the network: the laptops, the timer, the cameras, the graphics. Studio builds the pictures the crew and the speakers need and sends each one back out over NDI: the Cliqer Timer source or a comfort screen with the clock or the next cue for the downstage monitors, the Multiview for the crew on any screen or tablet, wired or over WiFi, and Program for the recording and the stream. Phones and tablets in the room watch Program or any NDI source through screen sharing.

Sound travels on the same layer. Studio's mixer runs in 32-bit floating point, so nothing clips inside the mix however hot the sends, and a limiter on Master sets the ceiling on the way out. On Studio 4K and up you add your own buses, each with its own limiter, and each NDI output picks any bus by name, so a feed can carry one mix while the room hears another. AES67 network audio and Dante Virtual Soundcard patch in the Router like any other device.

What that buys you. Adding a monitor means an NDI receiver on the network, not a re-patch. Recording and streaming are switches in Studio, not more boxes in the rack. A second presentation laptop with the same setup stands by as the backup, and Studio itself can run with a hot standby computer. The money that went on the processor's rental and its operator goes on cameras, a stream and recording instead.

Cliqer Studio is built for large shows. One computer can drive the wall from its Projection section and run the NDI layer at the same time. Each output canvas goes up to 7680 x 4320 pixels: that is sixteen full HD screens per laptop, or any mix of projectors, monitors and LED, and a hardware splitter cuts it up. For a bigger stage, add computers. Pair them in Redundancy as render machines and one show splits its canvas across them, each drawing its regions on the same frame. A paired Backup follows the Main and takes over if it stops.

The picture holds up at that size. Studio is a native app with an engine written in Rust, on Metal on the Mac and Direct3D on Windows, and the status line always shows the Program frame rate, GPU and CPU load. Display outputs run at the monitor's native mode for the sharpest picture. On Studio 8K and Enterprise, Program runs in 10-bit SDR, HDR PQ or HDR HLG up to 4K, HDR inputs are tone mapped for the outputs, Blackmagic outputs send 10-bit and NDI sends 16-bit.

Multiview: Program large, Preview in green and every input numbered, with red tally on what is live. Any screen on the network can show it.

A word on NDI

NDI is how most software shows move video over a network, and Cliqer sends Program, any input, the Multiview and the timer as NDI sources (how NDI works). Barco's E2 spec sheet lists no NDI input. Barco's brochure points at its IO Gateway for SMPTE ST 2110 and IPMX instead, which is another box to buy. In the setup above none of that is needed.

Side by side

The numbers below are Barco's published figures for the E2 range and the limits from our docs. Where a row says not stated, we found nothing on the vendor's page and did not guess.

Where the E2 spec sheet still counts

Be fair to the numbers: the E2 Gen 2 has up to 40 physical inputs, including 16 at 4K, 12G SDI, analogue genlock on BNC, up to 32 layers in HD, and chassis that link for very large flat LED canvases. If a touring rock show needs dozens of fixed SDI sources on one huge flat LED wall, that is the job it was designed for.

That is not a corporate event. A conference, an awards night or a product launch is a handful of presentation laptops, a few cameras, a wide projection wall that is rarely flat, comfort monitors, a timer and a stream. For that show the E2 adds a rental, an operator and a warm rack, and its blend cannot follow a screen that is not flat.

Cliqer covers the edges too. Blackmagic capture cards work as inputs and outputs (Cliqer needs Blackmagic Desktop Video installed), and with Reference Master on, the studio clock follows a Blackmagic card's genlock reference, so Cliqer can run to a house reference when the card supports one. Each Blackmagic output shows its genlock state, and the card sets the frame rate.

What it costs to get in

Barco. Barco publishes no list price for the E2. It is built to order or rented, and every show day also pays for a trained operator and the rack, power and cabling around it. On the shows we have priced, the processor's rental alone cost more than our whole software and hardware kit.

Cliqer. Our plans are listed on the pricing page: Studio HD and Studio 4K bring Studio at a smaller scale, and Studio 8K adds the largest outputs and the projection tools. You can try the lot first on the free trial, whose outputs carry a moving watermark; the limits are in Plans and limits. Add a computer, a 100G switch, an HDMI switcher and a splitter, and the kit fits in a carry-on case.

FAQ

Choose the tool for today's shows

The E2 earned its place when a computer could not drive a projection wall. Today it can. Map and blend the wall in Cliqer Studio, send it through plain hardware with zero latency, and run everything else on an NDI network with Cliqer Studio. It is quicker to set up, easier to fix, and it costs less per show than the processor's rental alone. Download Cliqer to try Studio on your own rig.