kmk Posted October 12, 2004 Share Posted October 12, 2004 Hi there! I am a theatre designer and began working in the industry fairly recently...therefore being quite inexperienced so far! I am designing a play and want to use projected images and film clips. The theatre has a projector and I have been told this can be rigged up to a laptop and the projections be done as a powerepoint presentation. I believe that I must provide the images as jpg and the clips as mpeg format. Does this sound alright so far? To complicate matters, I want some of the images projected to have transparent areas, ie as if photocopied onto acetate so that white areas are transparent and we see the patterned wall behind the image. Does anyone know how I could do this? I am a bit of a technophobe so please talk in laymans terms! :) Thank-you very much!Kate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanielArkley Posted October 12, 2004 Share Posted October 12, 2004 Hi there! I am a theatre designer and began working in the industry fairly recently...therefore being quite inexperienced so far! I am designing a play and want to use projected images and film clips. The theatre has a projector and I have been told this can be rigged up to a laptop and the projections be done as a powerepoint presentation. I believe that I must provide the images as jpg and the clips as mpeg format. Does this sound alright so far? To complicate matters, I want some of the images projected to have transparent areas, ie as if photocopied onto acetate so that white areas are transparent and we see the patterned wall behind the image. Does anyone know how I could do this? I am a bit of a technophobe so please talk in laymans terms! :) Thank-you very much!Kate<{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hi Kate, Powerpoint, although it will work, is not the best solution - but for now we'll stick with it! The still images can be in any format that Powerpoint can open - jpeg, gif, bitmap (bmp), and numerous others. Movies will be best in mpeg, or even wmv. Whatever you're happy with. I assume you will be using an LCD projector. If so, you will want to have black areas on your slide, and these black areas will show up "transparent". The black bits will block out the light from the projection source, whereas anything bar black will let it through. Don't make the mistake of putting a white background and assuming that is see-through - I've seen it done before now! It's the opposite of printed media - white on print, black on projection. Hope this helps, and is easy to understand! Daniel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeR Posted October 12, 2004 Share Posted October 12, 2004 There should be at least 1 PM waiting for you KMK if not msg me please. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timmath Posted October 12, 2004 Share Posted October 12, 2004 If you need to have layered images within powerpoint then the best way is to produce you source material as GIF files with transparent backgrounds then build your 'picture' in powerpoint. The video files can be pretty much any PC format - but Mpeg will probably work best if you don't have an overly high spec machine. Be aware the powerpoint will have a small delay between you clicking at id playing. This is because it loads the video clip only when it's told to play it. Regards Tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Posted October 13, 2004 Share Posted October 13, 2004 If you're taking the whole thing from a laptop, from powerpoint, I don't think there is anyway of making areas transparent. This is because when a digital projector projects an image, it takes everything from the laptop and projects it. Therefore, for example, if you coloured in the area black, it would project black. If you're taking pictures from film frames, then do as Daniel says and colour the area black that you want transparent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbsy Posted October 13, 2004 Share Posted October 13, 2004 Er...I think we may have a problem with terminolgy about what we mean by "transparent" here... An LCD projector doesn't "project black" It simply projects no illumination in the areas of the image that are meant to be black. On the screen they LOOK black because, normally, the room is dark and there is no other illumination on the screen in that area. If this is the effect you want, then black areas are fine. However, the example quoted (of the overhead transparency) sounds like you actually want an area of the set illuminated by the projector, to show the pattern on the wall. In this case, you might want to put a pure white area in the powerpoint slide since putting standard lighting on the area would wash out the rest of the image. I hope I'm not being too confusing here! BTW, for the movies, a second option that might work would be burning the films you want to DVD and switching inputs on the projector. This might give better quality than the sort of MPEG film you usually get within Powerpoint (but would obviously depend on how integrated to the rest of the presentation the films would have to be). HINT: if you ever DO use DVDs to project, put some kind of caption on first, then a second of black, then the film. Hit pause when you see the black, and you should get a pretty seamless cue to start the video. Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colinmonk Posted October 13, 2004 Share Posted October 13, 2004 Switching inputs on a projector to run different sources is probably a bad idea as you will usually get a little caption on screen saying " input 2" and in some cases some technical info re that input like "input 2 pal" or "input 2 1024x768 @60hz" If you encode the mpegs well, then they will be fine to run in powerpoint, as long as you dont need too much lip sync " altho this can be rectified with an audio delay" Just make sure your playback machine has a decent processor and a resonable amount of ram, also turn off things like windows sounds and windows screensavers, and auto virus scans... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeR Posted October 13, 2004 Share Posted October 13, 2004 Switching inputs on a projector is a common occurence & doesnt mean that you will get on screen information. OSD s can be switched off. Nor is there any reason why you would need to delay the audio on a video running via powerpoint. In fact using a delaty may well cause other issues & I would always avoid using delays if at all possible. Having said all that Powerpoint may not be the best means of achieving what you want to. There are plenty of options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benweblight Posted October 13, 2004 Share Posted October 13, 2004 why use the projectors switching?a simple video switcher (widely available, cheap) would do the job fine, without projector messages (assuming your pc has a video out, likely if it is recent, otherwise you would need a scan converter), it also means you don't need two cable runs (undesirable), and you don't need a vga splitter for your pc monitor. if you were going to set it up properly you would probably also want to setup a tv monitor (any with some form of video input) at the control position to see what the dvd player is outputting (most okish dvd players have more than one suitable video out, but if not you will need a splitter) ps: I'm no expert so I'm sorry if any of the above is inacurate, please correct me (although I'm fairly confident it is) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colinmonk Posted October 13, 2004 Share Posted October 13, 2004 OSD's can be turned off, depending on the projector, many of the lower end ones do not allow you to turn them off!!It is always good practice not to switch on the projector for sources, for many reasons... Also there are reasons and situations in which you would possibly need to use an audio delay ( for the example I viewed ), if lip sync is out of time with a video then an audio delay may well be used to rectify this issue... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmk Posted October 13, 2004 Author Share Posted October 13, 2004 Thank you all so much...what a brilliant site! I understand some but not all of the advice so am going to go through it all carefully when I have some time later. :( Seems it is quite a minefield eh! Thanks again, Kate :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeR Posted October 13, 2004 Share Posted October 13, 2004 Sorry to take you to task - but I have never come accross a projector where the OSD could not be disabled however low end. I am quite willing to be pointed at projectors to avoid in future though:) Switching on the projector is quite common & is the reccomended means of switching Barco projectors using kit like the Barco RCVDS05. Note I am not advocating changing ipnut 1 to 2 using an infra red remote, but the end effect is the same. However it does require that you know how to set up a projector correctly. Desktop toasters are not the sort of projector that you should base any kind of best practice on.Audio delays have their applications. and although they can be used for delaying sound so that it matches up with pictures. This is not one of those applications. I would go as far as saying that doing this is shameful. You should rather address the other issues in your video processing that are causing the delays in the first place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete McCrea Posted October 14, 2004 Share Posted October 14, 2004 It might be some of the Chrisite Vivid (don't take my word for it) range that can switch the OSD off. Or there's an option so that as it swaps from input 1 to 2 it does so via a black screen, not the usual blue one, giving a less jerky switch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jagardner1984 Posted October 24, 2004 Share Posted October 24, 2004 I had the misfortune to use an Epson projector yesterday - I'm afraid I don't know the model No, but at a guess very low end and about 3 years old - which gave me a lot of hassle changing inputs - with a big OSD in the bottom right hand corner. Even worse, when the laptop screen went to sleep, it refused to recognise the input even after I had restarted it - so I had to power down and then power up the projector!!! Yuck - never again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbsy Posted October 24, 2004 Share Posted October 24, 2004 ....which brings us to an important point: With the proliferation of computers in the theatre nowadays (for sound or video playback, controlling digital mixing desks, etc etc...) one of the first things you should always do is turn off any and all power management functions. The last thing you ever want is a computer that goes to sleep...cause sods law dictates this ALWAYS happens seconds before a major cue! Screensavers have gotta go, to! Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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