[Walter Soyka]

The Turbo is a great suggestion — it’s a PC-based DDR that uses MPEG2 internally anyway. It has a separate interface for the operator. You might want to check in with a local staging company, as they would be able to give you guidance on the multi-format issue.

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

[Walter Soyka]

Hi Scott,

If your projectors will accept a VGA input, you could play back from a standard modern PC or Mac with an MPEG2 software codec installed and dodge the format issue entirely.

I always recommend a live backup for computer-based playback, so that just in case your playback system crashes while it’s live, you’ve got a second source to switch to.

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

[Walter Soyka]

If I remember your prior posts correctly, Nicholas, you’re Mac-based, so I’ll second the vote for OmniGraffle.

On the PC side, there’s Visio, but I haven’t used it myself since before Microsoft acquired them ages ago.

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

[Walter Soyka]

Thomas is correct — Watchout is designed for one output per display computer. The Matrox TripleHead might work, but you will lose some big features, like the ability to place each display independently on the stage (all three outputs from the TripleHead would have to go together); you’d lose the ability to independently adjust for differing resolutions or pixel densities of the displays; you’d lose the ability to edge-blend: and you’d lose the ability to place the three displays into different stage tiers.

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

[Walter Soyka]

For SD, I’d look into renting a couple Beta decks, and overlap the second record a couple minutes before the first tape ends. Then you’ll have the whole program on tape if the capture fails for any reason. Roll a DVD record on 4-hr mode for peace of mind. Three and a half hours is a long capture — that would make me nervous!

I just bought an AJA Kona LHe — it does analog video in SD and HD, and it does SDI/HD-SDI.

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

[Walter Soyka]

Hi Teresa,

Which card are you looking at? As long as your capture card has analog audio in, you’ll be fine, but you’ll be limited to however many channels analog audio inputs your card features (probably 2). If you want to go multi-channel, you may need to convert the audio to digital before feeding the capture card.

Both Blackmagic and AJA include utilities that you can use to capture your video outside of FCP.

I always recommend running a backup record; you don’t want to ruin the shoot because your computer crashed while capturing.

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

[Walter Soyka]

I’d look into renting a switcher like a Barco Encore or a Vista Spyder. Not cheap, but purpose-built for switching to multiple destinations as you are looking to do.

If that’s too expensive, check out a matrix switcher as Thomas has suggested — but you will be doing cuts only.

How do you intend to play back the digital media files?

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

[Walter Soyka]

Hi Lee,

The theoretical maximum comp size is 30,000 by 30,000 pixels. We frequently do comps larger than 8,000 by 1,000 for multi-displays systems. The larger your comp is, the more RAM each frame will use, and the shorter your previews will be. You can also definitely expect some lengthy render times.

Also, you might want to find out how you are expected to ultimately deliver the animation, because different playback systems will have different requirements.

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

[Walter Soyka]

Hi Chris,

Add your comp to the render queue, and select the “Photoshop” Output Module. Click on the word Photoshop to edit the settings. It will say “Format: Photoshop Sequence” at the top of the Main Options tab. Change it to a Targa sequence.

I don’t know what Targa settings you need to work with your tracker — you will have a couple different options for resolution, and can turn RLE compression on or off. Some apps cannot read RLE-compressed Targa sequences, but uncompressed Targa sequences can be very large.

RLE is a lossless form of compression, so if you can use it, you will not lose any quality.

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

[Walter Soyka]

Hi Joe,

You’re on the right track.

Add your comps to the render queue. Use “Multi-Machine Settings” for the Render Settings and “Multi-Machine Sequence” for the Output Module.

Next, Collect Files. You can collect source files for queued comps. Check “Change render output to” and give it a meaningful name (defaults should be ok). Check “Enable Watch Folder render,” and choose a suitably high number of machines to allow. When you click the collect button, it will copy all the necessary source files to the folder of your choosing.

Make sure do you put everything into a folder, because you cannot use Watch Folders on the root of a volume. I’d advise creating a Render folder on your shared storage, and then collecting files for sequences into their own sub-folders of the Render folder.

Next, Watch Folder on each render machine, and point it to the Render folder (which contains the sub-folders for each comp).

More information here:

https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/help.html?content=WS3878526689cb91655866c1103a4f2dff7-79a2.html

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