Best way to connect to AV rig, Looking for campact flexible kit to play back video Options

[smileeej]

Hi All

I am new to this forum and have a look around and it generally seems it is mainly people who set up and run audio visual rigs so this looks like a good place to ask my question.

I work with a celebrity who does various talks/lectures around the country. These can be in small 50 seater venues or 1000 plus venues. Therefore the set up that is provided for us varies considerably from a cheap dvd player with no monitoring facility connected straght to a projector up to a full audio and video mixing desk and large power amps.

What I am looking for is a very portable set up to play video/DVD, including audio, and photos, which can be plugged in to any rig and allow me to cue up and play quickly as the talks are generally not pre planned and so any clip could be required at any time.

I am assuming this will be a laptop, but even if it is, I need to know the extra kit, even down to cables, I would need to connect the laptop without loosing too much quality and mainting clear sound.

Any help greatly received.

Cheers

Jerry

[LXbydesign]

In the past, for this type of application I have just had 2 laptops with the vga's going into a switcher and the audio from dvd laptop straight into house sound system

One laptop does dvd and the other does PP and I can just switch between the two.

Im sure the AV pro's here will know of a better way , but as an LX person touring with the same sort of thing - it worked for me!!

[mac.calder]

Well - I would look for a decent quality pro DVD player - Pioneer DVD8000 springs to mind, add to that a small PVM (maybe an LCD one like the Ikam 7") plugged into the Super Out (which is the cueing output - has OSD to show what frame you are located to etc). It has DVI/Composite/Component/etc out - so it will plug into anything. For audio - a small 4 channel (Soundcraft Folio) will allow you to run your DVD player in, and a wireless mic or lecturn in if you evetually expand to that sized setup.

I don't like PC's for DVD playback tbh... A good quality DVD player is so much nicer.

[grahamdking]

I don't like PC's for DVD playback tbh... A good quality DVD player is so much nicer.

Agreed. You could get a small rack mounted mixer (like these) (so you turn up with a 5/6ishU flightcase for the DVD player, screen and mixer with two male XLRs hanging out the back. The venue staff could then just plug their chosen video cable into your dvd player, and two XLRs into your ones.

HTH and makes sense

Graham

[smileeej]

Hi All

Thanks for your help. My concern so far is the potential size of the equipment but that maybe something I need to live with.

So far, correct me if I'm wrong, it seems I need a flight case to hold a DVD player some sort of audio mixer and a monitor. Also leads to be able to connect to the house system.

I wasn't able to find the reccomended lcd monitor, can this be mounted in a flight case?

Just to through a fly in the ointment, would I be able to use a laptop as a monitor for the DVD player? That way I could also have the other play back facilities of the laptop e.g. power point. Would I then need some sort of video mixer to connect the DVD player and Laptop?

Cheers

Jerry



This post has been edited by smileeej: 22 Oct 2008, 9:54 AM

[mac.calder]

You don't NEED a flight case... it is just a great way to protect your investment.

The monitor I mentioned is about 10cm long, 5cm high and 2 cm thick, it weighs next to nothing and comes with a desk mount. I don't know if they have a website or anything... We just keep them in Sure radio mic cases (because they are the perfect size). As for connecting your laptop - correct, if you want to add in a laptop, you will need a small switcher, and if you frequently tour to venues who do not have VGA inputs to their projectors, you are looking at a fair chunk of money for a mixer which will scale the output to a variety of resolutions. I did not see any mention of using a laptop in your OP, so I did not consider it a part of your overall spec when I made my suggestions. If you do use a laptop frequently, then buy a $60 scan converter (for venues without VGA inputs), rip your DVD to your hard drive, separate it into the clips that you use, and then use powerpoint and embed the movie - run PPT in presenter view and you can just click on the slide with clip you wish to play and bobs your uncle.

[jason5d]

There's no one size fits all in this situation but...

If I didn't have a room full of kit to choose from.
I would buy a mac laptop and a usb sound card with with XLR and phono
the mac will give you composite, svideo, dvi and vga.
Possibly have a portable dvd and a kramer multi format switcher for back up


There's various software about that can do a playlist you can edit
I've heard that qlab is fairly good.

This post has been edited by jason5d: 23 Oct 2008, 3:37 PM

[bruce]

There's no one size fits all in this situation but...

True, but I can't remember the last time I went into a venue with a permanently-installed data projector that did not have the facility to plug in a VGA cable.

(actually I can. It was a bowling club and they had an ancient 3-gun projector on the roof hooked up to a VCR....)

I'd suggest that a laptop with VGA output, a decent USB soundcard, maybe a transformer audio isolator or a couple of DIs, and a selection of XLR-JACK adaptors would cover most eventualities.