Projection for beginners

[rob_cheese]

A quick confession to start; I know virtualy nothing about video and projection so apologies if I'm asking stupid questions!

 

The director of an upcoming play wants to use Video projection, and we've been given a budget of £1,000 to buy the relevant equipment.

 

I'm assuming ths would be split roughly

£500 projector

£250 Laptop (Or other means of playback)

£250 Mounting hardware cables etc.

 

 

We had a trial with a borrowed projector which had an output of 1000 lumens which gave an acceptable brightness, projecting onto the cyc, but we some extra brightness would be better. We are looking to mount the projector above the stage, the optimum position would be a beam 2.8m from the cyc, but we hve up to 5m to the proscenium arch, and looking for an image of ~2.2m across.

 

Thus we think we need a short throw projector, of 2,000 lumens or more.

 

Are there any other features that we should look for? I was keen on one with a shutter, but suspect that would be out of our budget?

 

My fellow technicians have come up with the Benq MX613ST. Any other Suggestions?

 

 

The main question that I have regards cabling; I'd like to be able to run the projection from our normal position at the back of the hall, but this would require a cable run of 20-30m.

 

How should we decide which interface type to use? The projector appear to take HDMI, vga, component video etc. Would one format be best suited for such a long run, or would we need some sort of amplifier?

 

 

With regards to a playback device, I have assumed that a cheap laptop is our only option. I found this thread which mentioned hardware players, but one looks a bit too basic and the other out of budget. Presumably there's nothing in between? I'm a little bit nervous of using a PC to run cues during a show, and would have preferred a hardware solution, but is this just being overly paranoid?

 

So, to summarise my questions:

Projector choice?

Cable choice?

Playback choice?

 

Thanks,

 

Rob

[Shez]

This site is very useful for working out projector throw distances. That link is directly to the Benq model you're considering; for a 2.2m width, you're looking at a throw between about 2 and 2.4m.

 

30m of VGA cable is not unreasonable. I've just bought one of these from CPC for sending VGA over CAT5 for a ~40m run. The image isn't absolutely pristine, but from the actual viewing distance as opposed to close up to the screen, it did the job.

 

If you're buying a new laptop to be dedicated to the job of playing back your media, you should be fine. Problems frequently arise when people try to use their general purpose laptop that's already bogged down with software, malware, automatically running anti-virus software, etc. Keep it clean and away from the internet, set it up properly (disable power saving, scheduled virus scans, unnecessary desktop frills etc) and it should do the job. Just make sure you can set up its VGA output to be extended desktop and not just cloned.

[brainwave-generator]

Out of interest, why not hire - if it's just for 1 production.

 

For £1000 you can get some far superior kit. It will be operated by people who know a lot about such things. If it goes wrong they will fix or replace it.

 

What's not to like?

[Andrew Edwards]

The Benq 613 is a cracking projector for its class. We have one in our organisation and the hold up quite well even against the lighting.

 

We were looking to get the brighter 7 or 8 series but unlike the 6 do not have any zoom. Fixed zoom means you don't have that last bit of adjustment relative to rigging point. Really annoying...

[GR1]

I would consider hiring if it is for a short run or hiring until you work out what you need. For that money you can hire a 5-6000 lumen projector with horizontal and vertical lens shift with your choice from a full range of lenses plus the expertise of the supplier to tell you what other kit will suit you best.

[AHYoung]

a grand simply isnt enough unless you buy units so compromised that you regret it. Also have to say that anyone singing the praises of BenQ simply cant of used anything better and that includes most units...

 

The default unit to look at would be a Panasonic VX400 or 500 or similar simply as it has a 1.15 - 1.85 ratio on the lens. ie 5m wide from between about 6 and 11 m away and bright enough to also use some stage lighting...the vx 500 also has lens shift which means that the unit has a lot of adjustment for vertical placement. more here= http://panasonic.net/avc/projector/products/vw430/

 

These are multipurpose buisness units but bright and with the right sort of lens for the job. Effectively they are panasonics updated version of Sanyos XU106 which whilst available would have been the obvious choice at under a grand. Beware a lot of the cheaper units as the throw wont be wide enough and there will be very limited range on the zoom meaning that you will struggle to mount the unit inside the pros and get a reasonable size image.

 

250.00 is a bit light for a laptop on its own, but what about software? Screen monkey seems the favourite sggestion here and its not freeware -personally id say if you want to learn something usefull that stands you in good stead to do this Professionally, you want to learn Qlab, this can be rented or bought outright, but you will need a mac to run it on. There will be other sensible suggestions im sure, but again anything worthwhile and legitimate is going to cost you money.

 

You can get a decent enough mount for fifty quid or so, the Vision tele universal mount offers good value and isnt as useless as most cheapo mounts off ebay. Avoid cheap vga - cat 5 senders, simply spend the money on a decent cable. vga at Xga resolution will be fine down a 30 - 40m cable and you will get a better image than using the cheap cat 5 solutions which wont save you anything, degrade the signal and add another half a dozen points of failure. They have their place, but if you dont need, keep it simple and its going to be less to go wrong.

 

1000.00 will get you some rather nice kit with all the bits to make it work and the support when it doesnt IF YOU HIRE, id also expect change... the same grand wont buy you anything better than you could probably borrow for nothing with a bit of scrounging as im sure someone involved in the production has a unit at work or knows someone that might be ameanable.

[rob_cheese]

Thank you all for your responses.

 

I must admit that I was in favour of hiring myself, but the economics don't quite stack up. The £1,000 from Capex would shrink by at least a factor of 5 if we had to make the costs viable for just one show. Maybe something akin to the choice between hiring an Aston Martin for a couple of weeks, or buying a Dacia - you know it won't be fun but it'll get you to work for a lot longer!

 

The Panasonic certainly looks interesting, so I'll see if there is any mileage in stretching the budget slightly.

 

 

On the cable front, two of you have mentioned that VGA should work over 30m or so. Is this to imply that the other formats wouldn't, or that VGA is better, or am I reading too much into that?

 

Thanks

 

Rob

[paulears]

I note you are projecting onto the cyc, which loses you a great deal of your brightness - so you end up having a brighter projector to compensate. However, a cyc sized screen isn't realistic. Could you get away with a fast fold of something more manageable size wise? even if you had to hire just that in, it would look much brighter?

[Shez]

You can't send HDMI that distance without converting to some other format. Component will happily travel 40+ meters but you might struggle to get that out of a laptop. Composite video will also make that distance but again, you'd need to find a way of getting it out of the laptop and the quality is a lot lower than the other formats. Stick to VGA as it's easy and just works.

[AHYoung]

Hdmi wont go any distance and is also fraught with other hdcp and edid related handshaking nightmares, ie sometimes it wont work for reasons too dull and complex to go into here. Its also a fairly flimsy non locking connector. On cheap cable you wont get 5m reliably, on expensive ones you might just manage 20m. DVI is effectively Hdmi with a better connector, but the cables will cost more and also struggle to transmit more than 20m unaided, Generally if you need to transmit digital video over any distance, you either need to convert it to fibre optic and back or cat 5 or 6 cable using baluns or convertors. My advice is not to trust the cheapo stuff so you probably need to allow 400 - 500 minimum for transmitting hdmi / dvi over moderate distance.

 

VGA is an analogue format and goes a long way over the right cable. The connectors lock { if the laptop allows} and are fairly robust if you are carefull as you plug it in and dont bend a pin. Ive changed over to Kramer ones and find that their 100' cables are transparent and also coil reasonably well. The fact that we now often run at HD resolutions exposed a lot of our cable as not being up to scratch and we have pretty much had to buy a few km of vga cable in the last year, expect to pay around £2 / m for a decent cable.

 

 

Composite video is the lowest quality format but also probably the most reliable its a bit lo res, but if your sources are dvds and cameras fed through a video mixer rather than a computer, its a sensible way to go.

 

 

we could supply a package of projector, mount and cables within your budget, but that doesnt help with the playback, ive got a fairly expensive sony viao myself and a mac pro, most people I know use macbook pros, combined with fairly expensive software so thats whats going to bust your budget, im not saying a three hundred pound dell with vlc wont work, but make sure its actually got a physical vga output otherwise your going to be stuffed.

[jmleyelash]

Ex-hire is another option. The local sound company I use are always moving Panasonic Projectors on, drop them an email info@stagesoundservices.co.uk or call 029 20613577.

 

They have one of the biggest, if not the biggest stock of Panasonic Projectors in the country, 100+!

 

 

[AHYoung]

buying a second hand ex hire projector is very like buying a van from a van hire co. Its going to have higher than average mileage and possibly not been treated with the greatest of respect. you buy new, you get a warranty on not only the unit, but also on the lamp so you have no surprises. Its a gamble and it make pay off, but it might not...