dunk Posted January 14, 2007 Share Posted January 14, 2007 evening all! I have a little bit of a prob, I am helping a mate with his show at the mo of which we are projecting onto an oval shaped front projection screen. We are using powerpoint to cue all videos. The problem is that obviously the projector is outputting a 4:3 ratio image, thus, spilling outside the oval. I have tried to put a shape in the powerpoint file to mask the edges of the powerpoint output which works fine, unti you run a video. When running a video in powerpoint it always comes to the front, meaning that you cant put any shapes/text in front of it. Has anyone got any solution/ideas? There is no budget for a vision mixer. We have adobe premiere so we could re edit all the vids but there is literally about 100 of them. Seems a bit long really. We have also tried messing around with a card cut out over the lense but, as expected, it doesnt work. Is there any software out there which could solve my problem? Cheers Duncan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomo Posted January 14, 2007 Share Posted January 14, 2007 Adobe Premier is as good as you are going to get, unless you want to spend large amounts of money buying new software.(You did pay for AP, didn't you?) You can automate certain tasks within Premier, although I can't remember the details off-hand.Check the help file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WiLL Posted January 15, 2007 Share Posted January 15, 2007 I had to this recently, the only easy solution I fouind was to acytually adapt the slides themselves in powerpoint. I created a template in macromedia flash and added it as a top layer to all the slides. The template was a black screen with a oval cut out in the middle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dunk Posted January 15, 2007 Author Share Posted January 15, 2007 I had to this recently, the only easy solution I fouind was to acytually adapt the slides themselves in powerpoint. I created a template in macromedia flash and added it as a top layer to all the slides. The template was a black screen with a oval cut out in the middle. Hmm, interesting! Would this work with embedded video in powerpoint? As I said in my original post, powerpoint forces video to the front, regardless of what is in front of it when building the slide. Cheers Duncan Adobe Premier is as good as you are going to get, unless you want to spend large amounts of money buying new software.(You did pay for AP, didn't you?) You can automate certain tasks within Premier, although I can't remember the details off-hand.Check the help file. Of course I paid for AP! I admire your interest in Adobe's revenue protection! Dunk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Cain Posted January 15, 2007 Share Posted January 15, 2007 You heard of our use catalyst? I worked on chess recently and did a similar thing with two cut outs of america and russia.Works really well. HTHAlex Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beware Posted January 15, 2007 Share Posted January 15, 2007 Hmm, interesting! Would this work with embedded video in powerpoint? As I said in my original post, powerpoint forces video to the front, regardless of what is in front of it when building the slide. Cheers Duncan It's not power point that forces the video to the top, that's your video card hardware acceleration settings. Change them and try again. Right Click Desktop, Properties, Settings, Advanced, Troubleshoot, move the slider. You may find you get better performance if you run the laptop with only VGA output - ie, not Clone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomo Posted January 15, 2007 Share Posted January 15, 2007 It's not power point that forces the video to the top, that's your video card hardware acceleration settings.Sounds plausible - DirectX overlays can only be rectangular. If you disable the hardware acceleration and force the CPU to do everything, that might work - never tried it myself, but it's worth a go.Be aware that this will hammer the CPU, so don't ask the PC to do anything else at the same time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkPAman Posted January 15, 2007 Share Posted January 15, 2007 As a possible low tech solution, can you project through an oval hole in a bit of card, or something, mounted close to the projector. If it was very black, would it go un-noticed by the audience? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy_s Posted January 15, 2007 Share Posted January 15, 2007 As a possible low tech solution, can you project through an oval hole in a bit of card, or something, mounted close to the projector. If it was very black, would it go un-noticed by the audience? speaking from experience - no. Something to do with focal length, I think. We tried this, but we had to go on bended knee to the very nice man who was already doing us a huge favour by making our little animations for a very low price and ask him to mask out each one. Now we have Hippotizer, things like this are easy peasy. but not low tech, and not inexpensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dunk Posted January 15, 2007 Author Share Posted January 15, 2007 As a possible low tech solution, can you project through an oval hole in a bit of card, or something, mounted close to the projector. If it was very black, would it go un-noticed by the audience? I have tried that! It only works well when you get close to the screen, which is very unsightly. In rergards to the direct X settings, I have been in contact with MS powerpoint development team and they assured me that powerpoint always forces vieo to the front, regardless of what templates/shapes you insert in the slide on front of the embedded movie. They said that playing with direct x and the hardware acceleration will only alter playback quality. I am sure there must be a simple program which will allow you to draw a desired shape on your screen and it just sit there, regardless as to what is going on in the background. I know it will be simple but I am not a programmer, yet! Cheers! Dunk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
useyourimagination Posted January 25, 2007 Share Posted January 25, 2007 You heard of our use catalyst? I worked on chess recently and did a similar thing with two cut outs of america and russia.Works really well. HTHAlex @Alex: !!!You should really be careful, which shows you credit as yourselfs!!! Unfortunately it was MY AV-design. @Dunk: there is a programm called Isadora, can't find the link right now, but there is a free demo available which is fully working and only limited to 'not saving'. It's very easy to set up a masking for a video file... if you are intereted, I'll send yo a link. regards :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peternewman Posted January 25, 2007 Share Posted January 25, 2007 Isadora is here. I've not used it myself, but other people have recommended it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Cain Posted January 27, 2007 Share Posted January 27, 2007 Just for clarification, I would like to poin out that it was not my design, I was a member of the crew, namely a followspot op! Sorry for any offence caused. :D Alex Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Just Some Bloke Posted January 27, 2007 Share Posted January 27, 2007 !!!You should really be careful, which shows you credit as yourselfs!!! Unfortunately it was MY AV-design. A lesson there to ALL BR members! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olie Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 This may be a bit late for you but I have only just discovered this post. You can do this with the latest version of Screen Monkey v2 and the MaskedVideoClip plugin. The software has not been released yet but it is fully tested apart from the DVD player. So as long as you do not use the DVD player you should not have a problem. You can get the beta by using the contact form at www.screenmonkey.co.uk. Also make sure you ask for the masked video plugin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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