[Bob Bonniol]

The monitors in the Louis Vitton store that you saw are Barco 3mm iLite LED panels in custom configurations. Very nice… Very Expensive ! My friends at Scharff Weisberg Inc in NYC collaborated with Barco in their installation I think…

Dealing with that sort of monitor is a whole different ball of wax. Custom resolution MPEG playback with special front end processing…

Cheers,
Bob

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
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[Bob Bonniol]

Wings IS also a good option… I just won’t use them because their North American rep (Franklin) is the slimiest, most pushy, worst car salesman cliche type I have ever, ever met. And some of my friends who have worked for a long time at Dataton can provide pretty convincing (code analyzed) arguments that Wings is a bit, um, of a direct derivation of Watchout (shall we say).

So I don’t use it.

But it does the job, thats for sure. Really like how you can create preview sized movies…

Cheers,
Bob

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
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[Bob Bonniol]

Auguste,

Well QC is certainly a robust API for dealing with the OSX graphics engine; I HAVE heard of it, and used it. I can’t say I’ve tried to develop a synchronised file playback object for multi monitors, but it may be possible. The stuff I’ve done with it was more to alter desktop appearance and background stuff for purpose-intended installs (i.e. when pieces of media failed in playback, or playback engines unexpectedly quit, I’ve made custom desktop scenarios with QC so that audiences or viewers didn’t get ‘shocking’ looks at the underlying desktop). Essentially applications crashed out to neutral, icon free gradients. Pretty simple stuff… But it MIGHT be possible to use QC to do this, and by this I mean coordinated full screen playback of 4 seperate files… I’ll give it a spin, see what I can dig up.

But again, I’m just really concerned for you that you are going to have a tough time with throughput on the disk/Front-Side-Bus/PCI-Bus/Graphics card side if you try to reliably playback off one machine. Can you tell me, are you at least running off a disk array, rather than a single disk ? By disk array, I’m hoping at least a simple multi disk JBOD RAID… Something simple like a SATA Raid can be easy to set up. The most dependable scenario for that kind of playback would be an array of 4 drives. Ideally an XRaid or a Huge Systems external solution over SCSI or Fiber is going to be way better, but then again, you run into that budget wall.

Best,
Bob Bonniol

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
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[Bob Bonniol]

Danny,

We also incur a surcharge, but only when we get charged by our bankers on a transaction basis (which seems to only occur with AMEX, or in cases of transactions above $25k for Visa)… I think everybody’s commercial banking terms are probably different. But our surcharge is never more than what we are paying the bank for the transaction. Clients using cards to pay also offers them protection from fraud, and the ability to offset expenses into the next month… As well as get airline miles. We try to route most of our big transactions (albeit usually purchase transactions) through our company AMEX, because the points we accrue allows my wife and I to take a free vacation once every 18 months, as well as enjoy huge hotel discounts, etc. It’s not something to be ignored.

When we have to charge the surcharge we always let clients know on the front end, and we explain clearly that the charge is because we are getting charged that same amount to handle the transaction that way. Most clients understand this right away.

Cheers,
Bob Bonniol

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader

[Bob Bonniol]

I just needed to touch back on this after reading your other posts: There is NO magic to making sure your signal fits the monitor. If you make media for a 16:9 aspect ratio monitor in it’s normal position (sideways), and then if you physically go and turn the monitor 90 degrees, what would happen ? Do you see ? Your signal wouldn’t remain sideways… It doesn’t know or care which way the monitor is hung… So the signal from a DVD to monitor is consistant this way. it is YOU that must compose your media KNOWING that it will end up on it’s side…

I really hope this helps… It’s pretty simple in the end.

Best,
Bob Bonniol

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader

[Bob Bonniol]

This is nothing more than a standard 16:9 monitor used in a rotated position. My studio makes media for this monitor configuration constantly. Do exactly what Mylenium suggested: create a comp in AE that is either 1080 wide by 1920 high (if the monitors are HD) then bring this comp into a new comp and turn it 90 degrees clockwise (almost all standard flatscreens are turned 90 degrees counter clockwise when mounted vertically). Or, if the monitor is standard def (very likely) than we usually just author in an SD anamorphic resolution (720 x 480 with 1.2 pixel aspect ratio) and turn our heads to the side to see what we are doing. The problem with creating the SD res in a vertical precomp is dealing with the way AE (and most other apps) use widescreen pixel aspect ratio (which does not translate to being turned sideways).

So put simply, create media in a normal SD widescreen comp, but create it all sideways ! It’s just really as simple as that. It does involve you ‘thinking’ sodeways, and composing media to look good in that way, but thats not so very hard…

Best,
Bob Bonniol

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader

[Bob Bonniol]

Well you’ve run into the problem of feeding the 4 monitors with a single node… Even a quad G5 with serious cajones runs into bandwidth trouble here. This is exactly the kind of gig that my studio specializes in. Here’s the lowdown.

If you are going to try to keep it feeding from one node, you have to minimize file size and bitrate to make it happen. You had also better be using a RAID based disk playback… 9 times out of 10 when a platform chokes on playing media it’s all about disk throughput; it’s generally NOT about the graphics card choking. In terms of CODEC the Quicktime PhotoJPEG codec is one we swear by (most of the time, albeit usually with less monitor space than you are talking about). Setting the quality level at between 68 and 78 percent generally nicely limits file sizes while maintaining quality. But I doubt it’s gonna work at that resolution.

Your other obvious option is to go with MPEG2 playback. MPEG2 can be customised to limit bitrate, and it can deal with odd aspect ratio and resolution. The problem can be finding a good encoding scenario. There isn’t a really good one on Mac… What you want to do is author out of AE in a good quality codec (PhotoJPEG, maybe Animation), and then run that media through an MPEG encoding environment. Compressor is one option on the Mac, but it is SLOOOOOOOOOW and doesn’t offer deep controls for setting up MPEG right. We (gulp) use ProCoder on a PC platform for encoding. Procoder is, IMHO, the BEST software based media encoding solution out there, period. To get better, you have to start looking at hardware based encoding cards. Unfortunately ProCoder only runs on windows. But it makes stunning, beautiful, very tight MPEG files.

You MIGHT try to make the file into Flash video. SWF files are without question the smallest file sizes for what they convey, but getting flash video to not be artifacted at that size and resolution is a conundrum I haven’t quite figured out. I can’t believe how small the filesizes are, and certainly the reason YouTube exists is because Flash Video makes it possible for ANYBODY with ANY platform to see stuff fast… But again, I don’t know at that resolution. It’s worth a shot though…

Here’s how we do this in the professional world of multi display gigs: Media Server platforms. There are many different ones out there, but the two we tend to gravitate to are the Hippotizer Media Server and the Watchout System. Watchout is a product from Dataton. Basically it alots one computer per display (not necessarily crazy powerful computers, you can actually use Mac Minis), and then the ‘master’ computer takes the large unified media file and splits the workload of displaying it up between the individual display nodes. It works like a charm, and I’ve driven big multi display situations with up to 28 different monitors or projectors making one display with nary a hiccup. The Hippotizer is another option that we love. Each Hippo can handle up to 2 displays (apparently up to 4 after software v3 comes out in January). Each Hippo sits in a very fast PC based platform with a RAID array serving up MPEG 2 files. Either of these systems is gonna set you back financially of course… A Hippo HD (which can easily run the resolution you are attempting) runs around $38k street price. A watchout system with 4 display nodes, plus a master, and the software, would probably set you back around $14k to $18k. The other alternative would be to use professional quality DVD decks from Pioneer that would allow you to author the monitor feeds seperately and then trigger them all to playback in frame accurate sync (via machine control). Each player goes for around $5k, and a simple serial device control (say Dataton Trax or Medialon Manager) will run you another $3k or so, plus the cost of the host computer.

As you can see this is a field without easy answers, and that has a high degree of complexity. I’d say that 50% of my business happens as a result of folks who haven’t tried this before, think it’s simple, and then end up calling in the cavalry (us) after crashing and burning for awhile. Donm’t mean to demoralize you… There’s just a HUGE difference between a computer being able to display a desktop across 4 monitors, and it being able to show a piece of media that big. That’s why the feature film industry pays so much money for digital imtermediate work. Platforms with that kind of horsepower are still rare, and always purpose built.

Good Luck…

Bob Bonniol

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
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[Bob Bonniol]

I’ve found this can be a complex issue… Can I ask how you ‘know’ it’s shining on a layer ?

Have you turned on the 3D clickbox for the layer ?

Is the light possibly even with, or on the backside of the layer in Z space ?

Is it a point or spot light ?

I find it is very often the case when I begin a comp, that layers are naturally at the 0,0,0 point in AE ‘space’ and if you create a light layer, it is also at this point, resulting on nothing being illuminated because the objects are existing in the same place. I find if I make adjustments to the z position of the light things quickly become evident.

-Bob Bonniol

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader

[Bob Bonniol]

Hmmm… Wacky. I probably screwed up here somehow. I’ll try again. Thanks !

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader

[Bob Bonniol]

We’ve been using PI to create files in various HD resolutions (1080, 720, etc), as well as in some VERY large resolutions like 5120 x 768 and 8400 x 1024. These were for an enormous screen being erected as part of the Olympic games in Beijing.

Here’s the first key: In order to successfully render at the desired size, you have to have enough monitor desktop room to display the stage window. So if you are going to render out at 1920 x 1080 you have to have something in excess of that. For instance if you have 2 monitors hooked up to your station with an available resolution of 1920 x 1080 or better, than you will be fine. In some of our cases we had 5 such monitors hooked up by using multiple SLI graphics cards. So thats point one: have enough room on your monitors to see the space.

Point two, is that many of the emitters natively show up at a size that may or may not be right for composition in HD sizes. So be prepared to set aside time to re-work emitter sizing (which can involve tweaking quite a few attributes) in order to get things where you like them.

Point three (and I’ve just firgured this out), is that HD res has room for lots of particles, and lots of particles make extraordinary demands on your processing power. When you get down to the nitty gritty of tweaking and setting key frames you might find that things slow to a crawl. To get by this, turn off particle display in your view menu. Then make setting adjustments, and turn them back on. This way the computer is not trying desperately to catch up with you while you make adjustments.

Have fun,

Bob Bonniol

MODE Studios
http://www.modestudios.com
Contributing Editor, Entertainment Design Magazine
Art of the Edit Forum Leader
Live & Stage Event Forum Leader
HD Forum Leader