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… make ENORMOUS work area???
Working on a project that requires a work area of over 50,000 pixels wide, well beyond after effects limit. Have tried working with Combustion, but found the software pretty unstable for Mac. Any other suggestions for a composting program that will enable me to such a large workspace???
Thanks -
6 Replies
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Are you sure you need a composition that size?
What format/hardware are you delivering to?
Is this what your client is asking for and are you speaking to the right person with the correct technical knowledge? -
Actually, it’s only half the full size of the display area, in this case 40 1920 x 1080 screens, including gaps between the monitors. Once complied it will be split onto individual HD streams for playback.
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Software-wise, I would guess that the people staging this are using either Dataton’s Watchout or AvStumpfl’s Wings Platinum.
In any case, I surmise that your comp can be created in After Effects. It just depends on how the 40 HD screens are arranged: 40 columns in a single row? or 10 columns x 4 rows? or ???
For example, at 10×4, the comp is only 19200×4320 pixels which AE can handle…but you will probably have to view the comp at a reduced resolution else your computer would choke.
Thomas Leong
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Thanks for your thoughts. 40 screens are arranged in a linear format, in eight groups of five (9600 X 1080). Previous installations in this space have not utilized the entire area as a single surface, probably because no one could figure out how to do it. New client of course wants have content wrap all the way around.
I have some “cascading” test sequences that would appear to move around the room, but these could only work if the playback system could have staggered triggers, which is not possible. We’re using C-Nario, by the way, which theoretically could be used to create media on the fly, but I am not confident that it would look so great.
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Hi,
I’m not familiar with C-Nario, but it is a digital signage system and should be able to link/sync all the monitors. One problem solved. Unfortunately, After Effects seems to be able to create a comp that is max 30,000pixels in width.
In which case, have a look at eyeonline’s Digital Fusion. Not sure if it can handle more pixels per comp than AE.Only possible solution I am familiar with is AvStumpfl’s Wings Platinum 3 – the Multidisplay version, and in your case, without the additional Show Control Module. You only need 1 licence (USB dongle) since you are not outputting live to the various Slave nodes in your comp (each node needs a licence, i.e. 40 Slave nodes + Master = 41 licences and 41 suitable PCs plus a hefty Ethernet!!!). Instead you are only creating in the Master node, and need only to (render) output to individual files for each of the 40 screens (or Screen Fields/Display as Wings Platinum calls them). A demo with 1-minute output limit and an overlay is available. Dataton’s Watchout 4 also has a fully working demo free or download. Wings can output to MPEG-1, -2, WMV, AVI. The supplied MPEG/DVD codec is from Mainconcept. Dataton’s codec is from Elecard but I’m not 100% sure if, in Watchout 4, you can select the individual Slave Display/Screen Fields to output to a file each, whereas you can in Wings.
The big limitation is that both Wings Platinum 3 and Watchout are not an effects creator like AE, Combustion and Digital Fusion. The former composite in layers and can overlay/move/rotate/re-size with DVE-looking effects an object across all the Displays/Screen Fields.
So your workflow would be to create a sequence in, say, AE that is, say 1920×1080, and output with alpha channel (WP3 takes only .avi…so with alpha that would be uncompressed avi or Canopus’ lossless, etc. Watchout accepts Quicktime files without much problems)
In WP3, create a Screen of say 15360×1080 pixels (80 monitors of 1920×1080). For me, with my 2×17″ monitors, the resultant Screen preview window is almost one thin line… too line to see and work. You will need a big monitor/plasma to work with this). In Watchout, create a Stage comprising multiple 1920×1080 Displays positioned accordingly.
Drag your avi into your SCREEN 1 in WP3/Watchout, and position it in, say, the first Displays/Screen Field. Then drag the movement across to the 41st Display (which is a copy of/identical to your 1st Display), and the start and end keyframes will be auto created when you are in ‘Edit Objects in Timeline and Screen (S for shortcut key)’ mode. Viola! You now have an object that travels 360 degrees back to its original position. When outputting to files, you skip the render to the 41st Display.
Note the trick above to get a cascading sequence 360 degrees back to original position using a virtual monitor/display/screen field identical to the first (or last as the case may be). A similar trick across the gaps between the groups of 8 would be to create virtual monitors that fill up the gaps. The programming of the sequence uses these virtual monitors, but when you output the files, the virtual monitors are ignored, and since they are not physically ‘connected’ and therefore not seen, no harm is done but this usually takes care of the timing of the sequence between. Maybe your C-Nario can do the same.
Hope that solves your problem somewhat,
Thomas Leong
Owner/Moderator of https://multidisplays.freeforums.org -
errata –
“In WP3, create a Screen of 153600×1080 (not 15360×1080)…”
But in checking my Screen creation in my Wings, the limit shown is 100,000 pixels wide. However, I count 80 Screen Fields/Displays shown in my Preview Window/Work Area. Could be a bug in the specs “shown” because each of the 80 displays is shown at 1920×1080.
Thomas
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