[Walter Soyka]

Hi Sam,

How would you envision using the multiple screens? In other words, what sort of content would you like to see on each screen?

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

[Walter Soyka]

I’ll second the recommendation for a Compact Flash player. They are small, consume little power, and are built for 24/7 usage. The office staff won’t have to do anything but let it run.

Updating the content simply means updating the CF card; you could send a new card with fresh content for the office staff to swap out with next to no training.

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

[Walter Soyka]

Hi Cameron,

I think that would work beautifully. One suggestion — add in a couple seconds of silence, a single frame of 1 KHz tone, and then another couple seconds of silence at the head and tail of your track. Those pops will give you a quick visual reference when lining up your B-roll shots on the timeline and make syncing a snap.

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

[Walter Soyka]

Hi Ken,

I’m not perfectly clear on what you are asking—let me know if this doesn’t address your question.

Spyder will let you blend your 3 DDRs onscreen into one seamless image. You’ll have to check with the vendors to make sure that the specific Spyder configurations they are offering you have enough inputs to accommodate your needs. For example, to run IMAG and PPT over your sync roll, you will need at least 5 inputs.

You will need an operator to run the Turbos; Spyder won’t cue them for you.

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

[Walter Soyka]

You’re absolutely right — Keynote will not allow you to span multiple displays.

However, check out Matrox’s GXM line. These devices appear to the computer to be one very wide display, and then split that across multiple outputs.

I have used these on several shows, and they’ve been flawless. Note that some Keynote effects and transitions will require a fast graphics card at these high resolutions.

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

[Walter Soyka]

Hi Cameron,

Recording video and audio separately is called “double system recording,” and this is exactly what the clapboard is for. You’d write every scene/take number on the clapboard, start audio and video records, shoot the clapboard with all cams, read it aloud for the record, and snap it. Line up the audio spike to the frame where the clapboard closes, and line up all views of the clapboard closing, and all your sources will be in sync.

As a performer, you might want to play to a track, or at very least a click track, to keep your timing consistent across takes so the edit will be smooth.

If your cameras feature TC IN, you could send them all the same time-of-day timecode from a TC generator, which would make camera sync a snap. The 24p cameras would have a different timebase (23.976 fps) than SMPTE DAT (29.97 fps), so I’d think you’d still need the clapboard to sync audio.

See the thread directly below this one for a quick note on studio multi-cam color matching.

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

[Walter Soyka]

At a minimum, you need to white balance all your cameras on the same white card in the same light. Your camera operators should run their own irises manually. If the cameras feature zebra stripes, that may help them all with consistent exposure.

However, this will only get you in the ballpark. Because each of these different models have different CCDs and different video processors, each with different color and brightness responses, I think you will have to do some color correction in post.

Ideally, you would use a set of studio cameras for an event like this, each with a CCU (camera control unit). Before the event begins, you’d “chip” the cameras. During the event, a video engineer would sit backstage, continuously shading the cameras with one eye on a calibrated broadcast monitor and the other on calibrated scopes.

Since your cameras won’t have this centralized control capability, I suspect you will be stuck making these adjustments afterwards.

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

[Walter Soyka]

As Dave mentioned, AE will not help you, and you’re really looking for a game engine.

Blender has a free, open-source engine you could investigate.
https://www.blender.org/

Unity is another engine to look into. It’s got a web browser plugin and an iPhone development system.
https://unity3d.com/

Finally, you could probably do it with Flash, PaperVision 3D, and a lot of work, but this is the direction that Adobe seems to be taking Director in.
https://www.adobe.com/products/director/

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

[Walter Soyka]

DiVentix was one of the systems I had resource constraints with because of the edge-blend. It was workable, but we had to keep PIPs out of the blends & couldn’t mix two sources in the same PIP with the configuration we had rented. Your mileage may vary, but this is a concern you might raise with your AV company.

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

[Walter Soyka]

To add to the excellent advice from Mike and Julian that you’ve gotten already:

I generally prefer Spyder to Encore because its architecture is more elegant and flexible, but I think it’s overkill for the show as you’ve described it. Encore was built to do exactly what you are describing and will be more cost-effective than Spyder.

Watchout is a great solution for feeding full-res backgrounds to a multi-image switcher, and I use Watchout all the time, but I’d hesitate to recommend it as a multi-image switcher itself. It works on a timeline metaphor, not a program/preview metaphor. This makes it great for canned shows that won’t change, but less practical for live events where you’d prefer some flexibility in switching. The new features in v4 go a long way towards addressing this concern, but it’s still not the same as a Spyder or Encore with easily recalled presets.

Also, when I use Watchout systems, we always spec a backup, so you’d want to double your estimate to 8 keys and systems. Although Watchout itself is very stable, I’m uncomfortable with the risk of a computer crash without a live backup during a show.

I’ve done shows with other systems as well, but as Julian mentioned, you will run into resource constraints; you may not be able to position PIPs in the blends, and you may not be able to transition from one source in a PIP to another depending on the number of M/Es in use, forcing you to clear one PIP out before bringing the next source back in. That doesn’t sound like a big deal on paper, but it really slows down your transitions at the event. In other words, you will save on budget, but your creative options onsite will be severely limited.

Finally, I’m not a projectionist, but will 8K projectors be bright enough? I would have guessed 15K as a starting point.

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