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ultra wide screen multimedia show
I just got back from the new LBJ library in Austin TX where they have a multimedia show about LBJ. They use archival film, new video plus stills in the show. They pan the stills, move the different assets position on the screen and so on. The screen is curved with an aspect ratio of about,my guess, 4:1 They use 4 projectors to display it. Sometimes one picture fills the whole screen, sometimes two and at times much more . Its more sophisticated then my description but hopefully you get the idea. My question is how to they produce it? What program do they use that would allow them to compose it and then separate it out to 4 projectors. I guess I could see them making four shows and send each one to a different projector, but it seems that would be a nightmare in terms of timing concerning which pictures are on at what time and how long especially when one picture scans two projectors. Hopefully I made myself clear. I didn’t know what forum to ask my question on. Any help would be great. Thanks Gary
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14 Replies
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Check out Watchout from Dataton.com
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Thanks, Gary
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I do a lot of widescreen and multi-screen work, and I use Dataton WATCHOUT quite a bit.
I do most of my widescreen finishing in After Effects, even when WATCHOUT will ultimately be the media server.
Premiere supports very large sequences (10,240 x 8,192). I haven’t tried a widescreen job in Pr yet, but I am looking forward to giving it a go.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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We recently did a show with 2 projectors blended on a super widescreen with the software Millumin. You ben blend screens within the app, do multiple layers with masks, precompose with multiple layers, add in a live video layer from a video input source which allows you to do picture in picture from live sources like camera feeds/presenter or powerpoint feeds.
I created content before hand to fit the wide resolution in after effects, rendered as prores and millumin took it no problem, seems to be able to take a wide range of media formats(I think it even took illustrator files). It isn’t perfect as it was originally developed for live theatre/artistic productions but is always being developed/updated and in many areas is much more powerful then just a straight playback system.
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Thanks again helpful info
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If I use Premiere how do you then divide it to multiple projectors? Do you still need WATCHOUT or is there another way?
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Where do you find the widescreen sequence (10,240 x 8,192)? Thanks Gary
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You have to create a custom sequence in Premiere, but do also consider AfterEffects where you can do a RAM preview, and get an idea of what you are doing.
In order to display a large video in Watchout, you would need to pre-split the video for each display (this is a job for AfterEffects where you can crop upon output). In other words you create separate video files (preferably MPEG2 with constant Bitrate) including the overlap area, and you can import these in Watchout through the Video Proxy import, where it will then display a seamless video across all displays.
If your material does nopt need to be all motion graphics, and the background for example is static (or a slowly moving still image), you might consider doing your composition directly in Watchout. It really offers amazing real time rendering, and supports most types of image formats, including Quicktime Animation with Alpha channels (for smaller animations).
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2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x Prod. bundle CS6, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, Ethernet File Server w. X-Raid…. and FCPX on trial
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Thanks for your help.
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I’m currently working on a similar project, so here’s the workflow:
I was given a template in After Effects that has my 4 very large screens. Each screen is it’s own composition and then those 4 compositions are placed in a larger composition to see how they play against each other.
The widest pixel dimension of two of the screens is 4200 pixels, so basically 4K. I’m cutting in Premiere with 4K timelines and have a mask that I drop on depending on the actual screen aspect ratio so I can see how the image will be displayed. Once I’ve cut my sequence, I use Dynamic Link to bring it into After Effects and drop into the appropriate composition. This way any edits I make are automatically updated.
The projection company that gave me the AFX template also gave me directions on how to send my comps from AFX to Media Encoder and the various crop settings needed. For example two of my screens will be cut into 3 Quicktime files.
The projection company is using Pandora to marry all the Quicktime files back together and send them to all their projectors.
Hope that helps,
Jamie
CS 6
MacPro 2×2.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 16GB RAM
10.7.5
Quadro 4000
Matrox MX02 LE Max
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