Thomas Leong
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Leah,
Per our phone conversation, I am awaiting your requirements, and shall try to put you in touch with someone else. It’s Thursday here, and I’m off to Korea on Sunday for the whole of next week, so we’ll have to get this done quick.
Generally, permissions and licences are not expensive in Malaysia. But if one has what-we-call “the jalan”, literally meaning the road/path, figuratively the contacts, then things can be quick and smooth, but not necessarily cheaper especially if shooting indoors. Third world country…you know 😉
Waiting for your details.
Thomas leong
tleong49 at streamyx dot com -
A shot in the dark –
Small out-of-sync errors are usually due to the difference between 29.97fps and 30fps rendering, for NTSC. Make sure you render to the same fps (frames per second) rate as your original uncompressed avi.
Thomas Leong
from PAL-land -
Taken in context, the writer meant ‘it exists only in one’s mind’. Note the following sentence referring to “Maybe CS4 will make it real.” That should be a strong hint that Open GL generally does not work well in AE CS3 and earlier versions.
Having said that, Nvidia gfx cards are generally better at OpenGL than ATI cards.
Personally I use ATI cards as I find them subtly more pleasing to the eye for video display purposes, not for their OpenGL capabilites.
Thomas Leong
http;//www.multidisplays.freeforums.org -
Pre-split means splitting the output of your AE Master composition into the 4 screen sections accordingly by cropping the composition in your Output Module.
Example –
In AE, your comp may be 4096 wide x 768 high (4 screens of 1024×768). With a comp of this size, you can span and/or move your media elements across the 4 sections (text, video, stills), and create a background that covers all 4096×768, etc.When satisfied and ready to output, you would Composition > Make Movie. Then in the Output Module Settings dialog popup, you enable CROP and specify your LEFT and RIGHT pixels for each screen, one output a time (yea, render 4 times out or setup the Render Cue to render out 4 crops…think this possible, try a small section first). This is pre-splitting.
You will have other problems/decisions to make depending on the solution you choose and what type of media files play best with that chosen solution (Watchout or Wings Platinum or ???, etc). For example, Watchout accepts Quicktime MOV files quite well, but Wings Platinum is not so agreeable with Quicktime files. Generally, MPEG-2 is the least painless as long as your per screen resolution is agreeable with MPEG-2 requirements (i.e. perfectly divisible by 16, and width no greater than 1920 pixels per screen area).
Additionally, After Effects is a beast to sync to audio so it is advisable to do short sync segments in AE, but the overall audio and final sync points for the presentation, which could be 5 – 10mins, to be synced using the chosen solution.
Multi-screen presentations are very challenging. IMO, you have to be a Master of some things and a Jack-of-all-trades from script to screen if you are doing it alone.
best of luck!
Thomas Leong -
Have a look at –
Windows solutions –
1. Dataton Watchout at https://www.dataton.com (commercial)
2. AvStumpfl Wings Platinum at https://www.avstumpfl.com (commercial)
3. Syncmaker Pro at https://www.syncmaker.com (shareware)
4. https://www.vvvv.org (free for non-commercial use)Mac solutions –
1. Provideo Presenter at https://www.renewedvision.com (commercial)
2. Multiscreener at https://www.zachpoff.com (freeware)Cross-platform –
1. Max/MSP/Jitter at https://www.cycling74.com/products/mmjoverview (commercial)Most of the above operate based on a Master PC/Mac controlling Slave/Display PCs/Macs via a timeline or playlist. So if you intend to have 4 beamers, that would need 4 Slaves/Display PC/Macs controlled by one Master. That makes 5 nodes. Each node needs a licence and a computer with a reasonable mid- to upper-end 3rd party graphics card (ATI or Nvidia).
You produce your source on Adobe’s After Effects, output 4 videos as pre-splits from AE, bring the 4 results into the Master, assign from within the Master the 4 results to whichever Slave/Display is attached to the respective beamer, attach beamer to graphics card output of the Slave/Display, and play your Master timeline/playlist. The Master will instruct the Slaves/Displays to play accordingly and remain in sync.
The commercial solutions are frame accurate. The shareware and freeware stuff may be out by a frame or two, here and there.
Thomas Leong
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Hi Andy,
Q1: No experience, and doubt if anyone here has except for Bob who uses Watchout. You may get more answers and suggestions at the Dataton’s Showroom forum. Plenty of experienced users there.
Q2: Yes, since both 1024 and 384 are perfectly divisible by 16. There should be no problems encoding as MPEG-2.
But if you are coming from AE, the advice is to output from AE as uncompressed AVI or Quicktime’s Animation codec, then use a specialist encoder app such as Procoder or TMPEG to encode to MPEG-2. Apparently, going direct to MPEG-2 out of AE does not usually give a good/pleasing result.
Although the initial output from AE is an extra step, you will at least end up with a Master file that you can try compressing to other codecs or settings without having to resort to AE again.
Additionally, the uncompressed AVI or QT Animation codec is going to be exceptionally large and maybe unwieldy for minor corrections, etc….so you may want to consider Sequenced Targa files so that any changes to a segment can be re-rendered out of AE quicker and replaced within the total sequence.
If this is your first time doing pre-splits, try a short duration first, say, 10secs across the panoramic, setup some projectors and check the result. Choose a good sequence where mis-alignment is easily visible (eg. graphic lines across the panoramic). Last I saw this (pre-splits), the alignment did not work and graphic lines were visibly out, and there was no time to ask the girl to try outputting out of AE again as we were already on-site.
good luck!
Thomas Leong -
Hi Andy,
Q1: No experience, and doubt if anyone here has except for Bob who uses Watchout. You may get more answers and suggestions at the Dataton’s Showroom forum. Plenty of experienced users there.
Q2: Yes, since both 1024 and 384 are perfectly divisible by 16. There should be no problems encoding as MPEG-2.
But if you are coming from AE, the advice is to ouput from AE as uncompressed AVI or Quicktime’s Animation codec, then use a specialist encoder app such as Procoder or TMPEG to encode to MPEG-2. Apparently, going direct to MPEG-2 out of AE does not usually give a good/pleasing result.
Although the initial output from AE is an extra step, you will at least end up with a Master file that you can try compressing to other codecs or settings without having to resort to AE again.
Additionally, the uncompressed AVI or QT Animation codec is going to be exceptionally large and maybe unweildy for minor corrections, etc….so you may want to consider Sequenced Targa files so that any changes to a segment can be re-rendered out of AE quicker and replaced within the total sequence.
If this is your first time doing pre-splits, try a short duration first, say, 10secs across the panoramic, setup some projectors and check the result. Choose a good sequence where mis-alignment is easily visible (eg. graphic lines across the panoramic). Last I saw this (pre-splits), the alignment did not work and graphic lines were visibly out, and there was no time to ask the girl to try outputting out of AE again as we were already on-site.
good luck!
Thomas Leong -
The Corporate Video forum is probably the right place to ask this.
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This guy used Bluelight from Innovate Show Controls for the Midi/DMX part and
Arkaos VJ software for the video, plus the Matrox TripleHead-to-go unit –https://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Show-Control/message/12456
Thomas
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https://www.graniteprecision.com
may also do. Not familiar with it, but you can add a MIDI communication module to it, video module, and operator console module, etc. Suggest you write to them with what you require, and see if they have a solution for you.
Thomas