Live event with video + screen

J

jax_rox

Well-known member
It looks like I'm going to be hired to film a live event and run the screen on stage which will have a direct video feed, as well as a keynote presentation being run off a laptop connected to it.
Where my problem comes in is that the venue does not have a projector or screen in it, and I have little to no idea as to what sort of projector or screen to hire in.
I have experience with this sort of thing on a much loewr scale, and it hasn't been too hard to hire or find a home projector which i can use to project.
However, this s taking place in a very large concert hall which seats close to 3,000 people on 3 levels. I don't know about the stage specs, but the stage is very big and the screen coudl not just be a standard home cinema one, as it would have to go for most of the width of the stage. In terms of projectors, I am also at a loss as it needs to be very powerful considering there will be stage lighting and such going on around it and it still needs to be clearly seen. What sort of projectors are used in concerts and such?
Could anyone help me with this, this would be a great get for my company and would pay great but we may have to turn it down if we can't provide the screen and projector.
 
Because your're shooting on film, you'll need to match the playback fps so a film projector is in order. It'd be far more cost-effective to shoot video and just use a good HD projector. You can rent em at any A-V rantal house but good film projectors are hard to find these daze.
 
For that many people, assuming the stage can handle it, you probably wouldn't want anything less than a 15x20' screen (assuming 4:3 aspect ratio), and you're probably not going to find anything bigger than that to rent anyway. Some rental places are going to require that they set up a screen that big, and honestly, even if they don't, you might want to have them set it up anyway, because they're a pain in the ass. :)

As for the projector, I would say that 5000 lumens would be the bare minimum, and it certainly wouldn't hurt to go brighter if you can find it (especially with everything else that you describe going on).
 
thanks, that helps a lot. I haven't been involved with something of this scale before. I do think I'd have them set it up, I don't really wanna be doing it myself :cheesy:

Would you suggest a 4:3 ratio or 16:9? Last year at the same event (I wasn't running it) they had a 16:9 screen set up. I'm not sure if it worked better or worse than a 4:3 would, though I suppose its not that big a deal.

Another question, in terms of the live video feed, I considered using my MacBook Pro with a multi-firewire PCI card, and a program like BoinxTV on it. Would that work? My only fear with that would be delay or lag time in what goes onto the screen. Is there a way to eliminate this lag, would I have to hire cameras which have no firewire lag?
 
All right, let's try this for the third time... Firefox is being very weird on me this morning...

The aspect ratio question is a tricky one. Not only do you have to deal with what's best, based on the aspect ratio of your cameras, whether they're HD or SD, not to mention what the aspect ratio of the laptop is (and here it's usually a choice between 16:10 or 4:3)--but then you have to deal with the real world and what you can get locally for rental. There are going to be some areas where there simply aren't 16:9 (or 16:10, for that matter) screens and/or projectors available to rent, especially in the large size you're needing here. Now, if the venue's had a 16:9 screen in before, they may know where it came from and you could get the same one.

As for switching, I would not recommend Firewire. It's tricky to run Firewire for any distance, and in my very limited experience, the one time I saw somebody trying to do it with three cameras, it was the switcher that was causing the lag, not the cameras. Given that there's a laptop and a camera or cameras involved, the way I would do it would be with a seamless switcher/scaler unit, that will take the laptop and the camera signal(s) and adjust them all to the projector's native resolution. As for how to get the camera signals to the switcher/scaler, that's going to depend on the camera, but good-old-fashioned composite video is still just about as good as anything unless you're talking very long distances, in which case I usually use twisted-pair encoders/decoders--or unless you really want to run HD to the switcher, which is going to make your choice of switcher more important and the cabling trickier. Your friendly neighborhood rental company should be able to help you on the switching and cabling, but make sure you ask for a seamless switcher/scaler; otherwise some switchers have an annoying jump-cut effect when switching between inputs. I use the Extron ISS-408 system (with the add-on RCP-2000 T-bar control panel) on jobs like this, but there are any number of good systems out there.
 
Thanks, yeah I noticed the jump cut thing on a similar event that was held in the same hall and it was annoying to say the leasy. I definitely want to avoid that. I think I need to make some calles to the venue and enquiries to some local rental houses and see what they've got. My laptop is widescreen (MacBook Pro) but if neccessary, I could always design the Keynote in 4:3 asect ratio. I've been doing a bit of reading lately, and I seem to get the impression that if I were to run everything on 16:9 (or 16:10), it'd be a much better option to rent a widescreen projector. In my experience, I'm not really sure what the difference is, but the switcher/scaler should do that anyway. I think I need to make some calls and do some tests.
Thanks for all your help.
 
Well, I personally wouldn't recommend letting the switcher/scaler mess too much with the laptop feed. I always find it's best to have the laptop set at the native resolution of the projector, which is also what the switcher/scaler would be set at, so really the laptop signal is getting minimally processed (if at all; some units have a setting where you can just pass the laptop signal through without any processing, but some projectors won't like that and might lose "sync" when switching from laptop to video). The real reason for the switcher/scaler is to get those pesky video signals scaled up so everything can go through one switcher and one cable to the projector.

That said, all my projectors are 4:3, XGA; and all my cameras are native 4:3 SD. With a 16:9 or 16:10 projector, and native 16:9 HD cameras, that might change my workflow. I haven't really thought about it much, given that I think it'll be some time before my company gets any widescreen projectors--or screens, for that matter. Hopefully, if you find a rental place with widescreen gear, they can give you some suggestions there. :)
 
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