Mac Pro or iMac, Qlab or Hippo, Christie or Barco

[Michael Steskal]

We are wanting to get into projection and am Looking for suggestions. We are trying to cover a 20'high x 40'wide string curtain and vinyl cyc with stills or some movement.
I have hd/sdi, genlok, and cat 5e cables already run to two locations. Thinking that I would be able to edge blend two projectors they are about 56' away from the string curtain and 60' from the vinyl cyc. The side angle will be about 40 to 45 degrees.
I think they will give me a budget of about 60k to purchase.
I am thinking of a MAC Pro, solid state external drive with Qlab3 and probably two Christie 10k projectors.
1) Will that sharp side angle cause to much keystoning or do todays projects and software easily adjust for that?
2) I am looking for a quality device to go between the mac and projector.
3) Are these projectors pretty noisey if above peoples heads?
A dealer suggested I look into Green Hippo and Barco Projectors.
4) Should I stick with mac/qlab3 or jump to green hippo? Is there a huge learning curve?

 

[llburg]

For 1) yes, it's probably too much. Is it fixable in projector or in software? Absolutely. However, you waste a lot of pixels and risk some weird aliasing if you go this route.

 

[ruinexplorer]

The issue you have with being that far off axis is the quality of your image. Even though you can fix your image through processing in the projector or the computer, there are a lot of problems. First off, the more you process, the more latency you introduce. This won't be much of a problem for strict playback, but will add complications with audio or live video. Secondly, the physics of the optics means that you will not be able to keep a focus across the entire image. Third, in addition to latency, the processing required to deal with the keystoning will end up distorting your image by compressing the larger portion of the image. You will also not have an even brightness across your image. This is definitely not something you want to tackle on your first attempt. Also, you are talking about two separate focal planes. This will be difficult to keep a blend with intelligent lenses and impossibe without, not to mention focus issues. This is much better to attempt directly in front of the surfaces.

I'm not sure what you are asking for in number 2.

I assume you are talking about the M series projectors? How much distance do you have between the audience and the projector? They definitely have a certain amount of fan noise as they are completely air cooled.

The Mac with Qlab will be much cheaper. Qlab is more versatile in that you can use it for audio as well. The Hippo (depending on the model) will be much more powerful in video processing. One nice thing about the Hippo is that it has specific video formats that it works with and it will convert your video for you (unless it can't, but that's another story). I think that Qlab would have a much easier learning curve.

 

[Michael Steskal]

Thank you for the thorough response. Since I will probably going the Qlab/MAC route, is there something that converts thunder bolt to two or more HD/SDi outputs that also works with qlab 2 or 3 recognizes? Or do I need to go thunder bolt to HDMI to HD/SDI

 

[ruinexplorer]

You can adapt using this. I've never used it, but I like their products. Is there a reason you want to convert to HD/SDI other than what is installed? If you are concerned with the length of runs, there are other options available.