Video Projection

[NickLee]

Dear All,

 

If I were to want to do some video projection onto a screen on-stage, at a cue-state for interior, day (i.e. a fairly bright stage) what kind of spec video projector am I looking at getting?

 

What's the best - one running off a laptop or a DVD/VideoCD player?

 

N.

[Bryson]

Umm. That a big question.

 

A few questions:

 

What are you showing?

What size is the screen going to be?

Do you want to rear or front project? Or not bothered?

How much money have you got?

How good do you need it to be? (Is it total high-fidelity film, or shaky footage that could be a bit dodgy?)

[sticks]

hey,

 

dvd vs laptop depends on how much control you need. If it's just a case of pressing play then go with the dvd it's more stable and easier to use. If you have to do more advanced cuing up or run effects live go with a computer. I doubt you would notice a quality difference between the two, although this depends on your video card.

 

The most important factor deciding how powerful a projector you need is how it balances with the lx. If you can avoid having any light source hitting the screen your life will be much easier, flying the screen helps to achieve this as you can get it out of the way of face light.

 

sticks.

[mark b]

Do you have room d/stage to rear project? that would help your cause with where to site the projector and gets a nasty whirrrrey bit of kit away from the audience. also foils those wags with E/ir devices turning the thing on and off! Lumens wise a mac500 chucks out circa 16,800 lumens. A high spec "gee whiz you can by a house for that!" projector will chuck out 10,000 (big barco's) I have seen a firm who are claiming to produce a machine that chucks out 14,500 lumen but I have not seen the unit in the flesh or used it in anger. I would recomend somthing in the 5000 lumen brightness range with interchangeable lenses. For your app (and presumably budget!) Sanyo xp46 I would say is ideal. As for playback VCD would be the ideal solution. What exactley are you playing back? is this DV footage? If so how are you going to send it to the projector? s/vid or composite or RGB? Both s/vid and comp are lossy compared to rgb. Why have your video in a higher format than you are going to be able to send to the projector? (RGB will add a big cost implacation to your vid rig. If you do it properly). So stuff VCD format onto hardisk or cdrom and chuck it arround via svid from a laptop. jobs a good un! :** laughs out loud **:

The thing that will limit you is the projection distance/area to project probelm. Find out the area to project and work from there is my advice.

[Bryson]

I think 5000 lumens is quite bright / expensive for the "projected" (pun intended) useage. Obviously, it's desirable, but you can have perfectly accepatable results with projectors all the way down to 1800-odd lumens. (Dependant on the size of the sceen, of course...no point trying to fill the cyc with a likkle one.)

[NickLee]

cheers for all feedback, in-forum and privately.

 

I'm more aware now of what I'm dealing with.

 

N.

[stebee]

hi

 

as Bryson said the size of the screen will have a bearing on the intensity of Projector used. generally for theatre we have used between 1,800 and 3,000 lumens and not had any washing out problems, but as somene said earlier, trying to have the screen flown a bit helps too.

as for sources the content and frequency of image is important in this factor. if it is still images then use a laptop, if its one video piece then use either VHS or DVD depending on budget. do not be tempted to use DV (or miniDV) unless you have a DV deck. if its several video pieces use DVD or several VHS cassettes coupled with a vision mixer or vision switcher (budget dependant) unless you have a very fast laptop with lots of spare memory.

several people have come up with several ideas for in between when there is image and not image, my personal favourite is to use a scroller with some neutral density gel in to "blackout" the projector when not required, operated from a sub or built into a cue.

also make sure that there is plenty of tech time for this all to happen smoothly.

 

rgds

 

STE

[James]

do not be tempted to use DV (or miniDV) unless you have a DV deck

 

Or a firewire port on the camera with a DV Bridge. Oh and run it from the charger..... (It can be done...)

[Bryson]

On the subject of miniDv, we'vehad real problems with break-up when swapping tapes between different maufacturers of equipment. (Canon cameras to Sony decks, for example.) So watch out for that.

[James]

On the subject of miniDv, we'vehad real problems with break-up when swapping tapes between different maufacturers of equipment. (Canon cameras to Sony decks, for example.) So watch out for that.

 

....

 

This sounds wrong

 

The only case of breakup on MiniDV should be when you try to play a Long Play cassette in a Standard Play machine. LP is AFAIK not part of the mini DV spec so you almost always have to play it on the machine of origin, different manufacturers implementing LP in their own special way :unsure:

 

Now Sony Canon problems sound wrong- what was the camera and the deck

 

Oh and you are not confusing another format eg DVCAM or DVCPRO with mini DV are you (well they all use the same cassettes which doesn't help much)

[Big Dave]

I've never had a problem with DV/miniDV on any show - is becoming more of a standard now than Beta.

 

As for a projector, if your putting a screen on stage with half decent lighting, 4000 ANSI FP or 5000 ANSI RP up to 12' wide image will give a good image for any source.

[Matt]

format wars here - firewire actually owned by apple I think, the pc standard is IEEE1394, sony call it the I-Link, what the hell, you necessarily have to have a dv deck for it, most dv camera's and infact all that I know of have a seperate video out feed, either by s-video or composite...

 

...feel free to correct me all you techno junkies, lmao no offence :o

[Tom]

May I resurrect this thread to ask a similar question.

 

I want to front project (powerpoint slides) onto a screen at the back of a stage during a (classical) concert.

The throw is about 14mtrs and I want an image about 4mtrs wide.

 

An AV hire company has suggested I use a 4500 ansi lumen Sanyo projector with an appropriate lens (they'll spec when I give them the final numbers).

 

They've quoted me (per week)

Projector: £485

Lens: £150

Cradle: £60

 

Does the above spec/pricing sound OK?

 

Is 4500 ansi lumens overkill? (or not enough?)

[Bryson]

format wars here - firewire actually owned by apple I think, the pc standard is IEEE1394, sony call it the I-Link

 

IEEE1394 = I-Link = Firewire

 

It's all the same standard, different names.

 

To resurrect the previous discussion, the breakup problem was with a Canon XL1 camera and a Sony MiniDV deck (I forget the exact model, but it was one of those little cute ones with the built in LCD)

[Big Dave]

For a week's hire that sounds like a good deal, although it depends which projector they specify. Sanyo do now make desktop type projectors that will deliver 4500 ANSI but lack any form of image manipulation so rely on inch perfect positioning of the projector.

 

I don't think 4500 ANSI will be overkill at all. claissical concerts generally have quite high ambient light levels and if it you think it is too bright, then you can always reduce the light output.

 

HTH