[Walter Soyka]

[Stewart Bourke] “I was hoping for something that was a bit more ‘dedicated’ to playback control for multimedia productions (without the costs associated with some of the professional software I have seen out there)”

It’s a niche market, with high performance and high reliability demands. There are some really great products in this space, but they all cost (and are worth) money.

I don’t have a solution I could propose to you that wouldn’t carry these costs, but I can describe a couple gotchas you should be aware of — I know this doesn’t answer your question, but hopefully it will be helpful.

The TripleHead presents itself to as a single, very wide monitor to the computer, so the system only treats it as one monitor (not three). Anything that attempts to use a full-screen mode will take over all three channels. Your playback software would need to effectively place your videos in 3 side-by-side windows on the second display.

A single laptop will probably struggle playing back three channels of high resolution video (or six channels, if you need to dissolve). Most professional systems would use one computer or playback device per output channel. You will need to make some tradeoffs — highly compressed video files will be easier on the disk subsystem, but harder on the processor. Lightly compressed video files will be easier on the processor, but harder on the disks. Either could cause dropped frames.

What will you do when the movies aren’t playing, or when you’re transitioning from one movie to the next?

Finally, I always recommend running a redundant live backup of a playback system during a live event, so that a computer crash doesn’t ruin your evening.

Good luck with your event!

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Walter Soyka]

The only real consideration for my After Effects workflow would be what kind of file delivery was necessary. You mentioned that your system supports a wide variety of codecs, but does it keep them native, or does it transcode to a particular file type? I always prefer to deliver to a format that will play natively.

Also from your original feature list, I think the internal dissolves are huge. That means I can use your system as wallpaper/background channels without dedicating an M/E or bank of M/Es in my switcher to A/B dual sets of decks.

I’m curious about the track feature — how do you see that being used?

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Walter Soyka]

I am guessing that this is an LED product? I always recommend designing at the exact pixel size of a custom display like this. The display is the limiting factor. Making your video at a higher resolution will not get you any more pixels on the display. It will force the video processor to scale the image down, which it may not handle well.

What’s the physical size of the display? The aspect ratios you listed in pixels and feet don’t match. Assuming you meant nearly 12′ wide by 6.5′ tall, I’d think this would look fine to a viewer about 30′ away from the sign. Signs like this are designed to be viewed from a distance; if you are too close, your eye can resolve the individual pixels.

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Walter Soyka]

Bruce,

I think we exchanged emails on this last year — this feature set sounds incredible and I can’t wait to see this product in action.

I want to know how my playback system fits in my workflow from three perspectives: pre-show content design, on-site engineering, and on-site operation. When I’m suggesting a system, I am usually weighing tradeoffs against the specific needs of the show and making compromises, so different shows get different playback systems.

While some of your competitors may be capable of multi-screen, it sounds like your system is actually designed holistically for multi-screen. No one feature alone is a knockout, but taken together it sounds quite unique.

I’d love to chat with you about this in further detail — if you’ve still got my contact info, please feel free to reach out any time.

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Walter Soyka]

To build on Dave’s point, both Quicktime and AVI are “container” or “wrapper” formats. Container formats describe how to store and read tracks in a file, but not how to actually interpret the streams. That’s where codecs (codec stands for compressor/decompressor) come in — they actually describe the video, audio, timecode, subtitles, etc.

You could store just about any kind of video in an AVI — Cinepak, DV, uncompressed, h.264, etc., but the codec must be installed on the system for playback. Here’s a list of codecs pre-installed on PCs:

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/899113

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Walter Soyka]

Depending on how large you really need the image to be, you could buy a couple of cars for what you’d spend on the projector.

You might call a local staging company to discuss your needs and rent/set up a projector, screen, and dress kit.

As a side note, we run all our presentations on two computers, a main and a backup (with a high-res switcher), to protect against the possibility of a computer crash.

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Walter Soyka]

There are a wide variety of solutions here; you can search this forum for some good discussions on your options.

Basically, if you want dedicated hardware, you could use synchronized DVD players, Compact Flash players, hard-disk based DDRs like Turbo or DoReMi, or media servers like Hippotizer or Pandora’s Box. If you want to use PCs, you’d need high-spec machines and software like Dataton Watchout or AVStumpfl Wings. If you want to use Macs, you’d want software like Pro Video Player or Playback Pro. I would strongly discourage you from trying to base a three-screen installation off a single laptop.

Your specific implementation will depend on your specific needs. What’s the creative? What else will you have going on in the installation? What other pieces need to work together? Do you plan three separate screens, or one large blended screen? Do you need the ability to expand the system through the life of the installation?

You should make sure to include a line item for assistance coordinating the media and the physical projection in your budget to make sure that your creative needs will be met.

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Walter Soyka]

Quadros are nice, but they won’t speed up your renders. They primarily accelerate the user interface in AE.

If you are looking to improve your render times (and who isn’t?), then RAM is far more important to AE than the graphics card — you’d want at least 2GB per core, preferably 4 GB per core, and a 64-bit edition of Windows if you’re on a PC.

Search on “graphics card” in this forum for a lot more on this topic — there have been a ton of posts about this recently.

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Walter Soyka]

[david bogie] “Strongly urge the OP to forget everything at this point to avoid preconceptions and to begin investigating the digital signage industry. Multiple display from a split simultaneous playback is a no-brainer in that industry.”

Respectfully, multiple display is very common in live events, but it is not a no-brainer when you are trying to create a seamless widescreen projected display. There are many factors that would influence playback.

For that reason, you can’t spec the playback device first. An h264-based digital signage system would be able to do what he needs, unless he needs edge-blending in the device, or unless he needs geometry correction, or unless he needs to integrate it with an existing show control system, etc. It’s certainly a great option, but at this point, it’s still one of many options, and we’d need more information before recommending one.

[david bogie] “We see these posts several times a year and they all have weirdly similar but unique solutions.”

Widescreen is an important part of my business, so I work on things like this a couple times a month. The solutions seem similar because the engineering process is the same; they are unique because the physical and creative requirements of each of these display systems differ.

This specific conversation has a thread now over in the Live Events forum:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/158/855746

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production

[Walter Soyka]

[eugene park] “I did draw a diagram of how I wanted the projection set up.. all three would be on a tray hanging from the ceiling so they will all share a central location as well as the laptop and expansion module. So one would be projecting straight foward and the two on each side would be projecting at angles.”

I am really glad you mentioned this, so I could try to talk you out of it. This will give you fits trying to align, it will degrade the image from the excessive keystone distortion (if you can even keystone it enough), it will suffer from focus problems on the outer edges, and it will be non-uniformly bright. Projection should always been on-axis. Playback hardware shouldn’t be co-located with projection in the ceiling in case it fails and needs to be accessed.

Go back to your AV company and talk about the result you need, rather than how you think you should achieve it.

If they cannot provide you with a competent project manager, then I think you need to hire a technical director to help you through these issues. There are so many other considerations: what screen material to use; how bright projection needs to be and where it’s possible to hang projection in the space, both of which will affect how many projectors you need; what your options for playback are, etc. We haven’t even touched on audio or the lighting in the room… The scope of the project and its needs might be bigger than you realized at first, and you would benefit from bringing someone onto your team who go over your project, its requirements, and its technical design from top to bottom.

Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production