Thomas Leong
Forum Replies Created
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Have a look at Isadora for Macs. Switching between video sources is called Events, but whether you can get 3 live inputs into one Powerbook’s harddisk is another thing. You probably need to feed the live sources back out via the Powerbook into another Firewire harddisk. Theory only. I have no practical experience with Macs.
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“…Still trying to figure out how to make the darn thing auto-launch.”
This site should help.
Thomas Leong
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The specs for DV do not have any alpha in it. You should use QT’s Animation or Uncompressed RGBA.
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I’ll venture a guess.
When you playback from a computer, the output is non-interlaced and you are connected to the projector’s RGB input. Moreover, if the computer is set to output a resolution that is not native to the projector, then the projector’s own internal electronics has to both de-interlace AND rescale the resolution to its native (if it has a de-interlacer built-in). With a low-end projector, the quality of the parts (de-interlacer and scaler) probably failed to process the input within the micro milliseconds allowed before outputting to screen.
When you playback from tape, you are connected to the projector’s video input. There is no de-interlacing required. A low-end projector probably has SVGA resolution as its native res (800×600). That’s close enough to SD video resolution so the re-scaling is minimal and the projector should be able to handle that. Heck, it is probably built to handle video from tape than from computer, i.e. more for home movies. The only real problem you may have is the color from low end projectors. I’ve seen one output blue as a horrible purple.
Your best bet is to get hold of the projector for a day or two and test with your tape well before showday.
Thomas Leong
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Think that was true for Watchout version 1.0.
From version 1.4 on (current is version 3.1), Dataton went all Windows, and opened up for themselves a whole new market, and doing quite well at that.You may try Apple’s freeware Boot Camp, but tread carefully. I hear some users at the Mac forums have had problems with it where the install of XP via Boot Camp hosed the Mac OS X, and only a reformat of the harddisk could get them back into a Mac environment. No wonder Apple has declined support for Boot Camp.
Thomas Leong
Owner/Moderator of https://groups.yahoo.com/group/multidisplays -
You may want to look up some of the following for touchscreen control panels –
or contact their dealer nearest to you to see how you can work together.
If you are up to programming the touchscreen panels yourself, look up –
Generally, the DVD player to be controlled must have a serial input (RS-232) such a the Pioneer V7400. It is a more expensive than your run-of-the-mill home DVD player.
But nowadays, for such types of playback, harddisk or compact flash cards are the way to go. For such cases, google for ‘MPEG2 controllers’ and you’ll get a whole list of choices. One of the cheapest is an MPEG-2 Digital Player called DV-66 from Medeawiz
Thomas Leong
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Stepping through frame by frame, there is a ‘stop frame’ at every 6th frame (or was it 5th?…2.30am my time, no longer at the office). Not sure if this is a sign of pulldown. In any case, the juddering as you call it happens at the other frames too. So if there is a pulldown inadvertently added, it is not the main cause of the judder.
I still reckon it is the monitor’s refresh rate…as if, with my not-too-fast monitors anyway, the progressive scan cannot keep up with the fast motion of successive frames. Got to admit I was watching it on LCD monitors. Got to hook up the Triniton CRT and watch the original clip again, tomorrow.
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I don’t agree about the datarate being too high for WMV. I’ve done above 7,000Mbps WMV encodes and played them back without hassle, albeit not at 1366×768, but, from memory, at least 1420×576. They were also non-interlaced, but the movements were not horizontally across screen. So in the tests I did for this case in hand, 1,000mbps is a low datarate for me…too low from where I come from (projected multidisplays/panoramics).
In any case, what I see of the playback of the posted files was not framedrops. It was a sort of consistent jittering of all the horizontal motion at the edges of the images as they move across screen. Not a mis-interpreted field render, since there are no fields. Frame drops would show up as a skip and jump, but these did not. Not on my system anyway – just a modest P4 2.8HT with 2-drive SATA RAID 0. It would framedrop on my single drive system, until I re-rendered the test.aep submitted at the 4x duration, etc.
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hi,
Interesting…and perplexing. I have an interest in this problem as recently I was given a 60GB Targa Sequence (8,000+ sequence) rendered at 3072×768 per file, created in AE. The movement of the sequence was identical to yours, i.e. progressive scan horizontally across screen from right to left. The difference with your sequence is that mine was much slower, and I did not have as much jitter as yours during the horizontal movement. The smoothest I got mine to move right across the 3072pixels full screen at 25fps was to set (force actually) the monitors and projectors to 75Hz Vertical refresh rate.
However, this solution did not work with your test files…until I did a 4x duration of the relevant area of your timeline (6 secs x 4 = 24 secs), set your Test Comp at 100fps (AE only allowed 99fps maximum though), and rendered to Uncompressed 1366×768 AVI at the Comp framerate. Then took this result into a special software I have (AVStumpfl’s Wings Platinum – dongled Module version) which has built-in WMV and MainConcept’s MPEG-2 encoders, and re-rendered the Uncompressed at 25fps to both WMV and MPEG-2 at the extended duration.
Because of the slower movement across the 1366 screen area, albeit at 4x the duration, the jitter was minimal. Elecard’s MPEG-2 player reported a Jitter of 1, versus 8 with your original files. Windows Media Player does not have this Jitter Report feature, but playback was similarly smooth (very little jitter) with the 1366×768 1000Mbps file I rendered. This was regardless whether I played it from my single 7,200rpm SATA-1 C: drive or my 2-drive RAID 0 (also 7,200rpm SATA-1 drives).
I think the whole problem is a relationship between the vertical refresh rate of the monitor/projector, the graphics card’s vertical refresh rate settings, the horizontal distance travelled over the time frame, and the framerate of the movie, plus progressive scan. I’m not sure of the wherefore and whatfore of this complicated relationship, but I do know that the only solution I have found so far is to slow the movement down to a sweet rate that agrees with all these, and to set/force your monitor and graphics card’s refresh rate to be a multiple of the movie’s framerate when using progressive scan movies.
Thomas Leong
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The way I’d assess any such scenario is to calculate the ‘Foot Lamberts’ that (theoretically) falls onto the screen surface –
Surface area = 10.5x14ft = 147 sq. ft.
ANSI Lumens of Projectors = 5,000
with 2 projectors, I suppose that would be x 2 as an approximation, equvalent to 1 x 10K projector.
Therefore, 10,000/147 = 68 ft. lambert.Compare this with the norm (by today’s standards) as aLexx has advised, i.e. 5000/147 = 34 ft. lambert.
68ft lambert is therefore pretty bright, and if I may say so, more than satisfactory. I’ve used a 10K Christie Roadie in a darkend huge convention hall onto a 20×16 rear screen, for an audience of 3,000. That’s 31.25 ft lambert, and there was not a whisper of a complaint.The above is a simple calculation, but the principle is useful when one examines different screen sizes with other ANSI-rated projectors.
Thomas Leong
PS. to Bob, et al…If I’m wrong in the above, please say so. I’m still learning and would like to know the where, why and how.