Stuart R
Member
Hello all,
I'm another guy who has been tossed into the deep end in terms of providing video display solutions for our school theatre. I've spent a couple of sessions reading through relevant posts in this forum, and checked out many of the leads and products recommended, but am still far from confident on how to proceed. One of the things I've gleaned from past threads I've read is that there are lots of solutions to lots of scenarios and that if I'm not too picky, most things are achievable.
So we now have an ultra-short throw projector set up backstage for rear projection onto a center screen (roughly 12' h x 20' w ), to be used (mainly) as a backdrop for scenes in our theatre productions. Some of the backgrounds are basically slides, while others are animated, and lacking any dedicated video mapping software, for our first go at this we simply put the slides and the videos into a Powerpoint file and ran them on a MacBook Pro, with a USB-C to HDMI adaptor plus a 50' HDMI cable from there to the screen. It worked fine.
The new additions are two front throw projectors, mounted on lighting pipes over the audience, with matching screens on each side of the proscenium. The presence of *three* screens is setting imaginations ablaze, and the creatives now want to be able to send 1, 2, or 3 outputs to 1, 2, or 3 screens. Here is a visual:
Note the last item - a desire to be able to pretend we're having a rock concert and use a camera to capture an onstage speaker and project them in close up on the side screens. [In fact, the director wants to know if the camera can be WIRELESS so he can have the operator super mobile and make everyone seasick (that last was my editorial addition).]
Finally, with three screens to manage, we figure we need to see them from the front in order to operate them intelligently which means running all three from the booth, which is about 75 feet from the FOH projectors and 110' from the rear projector.
So, starting at the booth, can we run three images on one MacBook Pro and send them out as three signals somehow? What software would we use? Would we need to beef up the graphics card or anything like that? Then, once outside the laptop, I assume we'd need to use an HDMI extender setup (one big transmitter and three little receivers?) to send the signals over Cat (5? 6?) to the three projectors? My next question is whether we'd need something like the BlackMagic Smart Videohub CleanSwitch 12 x 12 6G-SDI, though I've seen some people complaining about a) the issues with transitions (momentary fade to black between images?, and b) the fan noise.
Anyway, you can see that I've read just enough to confuse myself. Any guidance you could offer would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks -
Stu
I'm another guy who has been tossed into the deep end in terms of providing video display solutions for our school theatre. I've spent a couple of sessions reading through relevant posts in this forum, and checked out many of the leads and products recommended, but am still far from confident on how to proceed. One of the things I've gleaned from past threads I've read is that there are lots of solutions to lots of scenarios and that if I'm not too picky, most things are achievable.
So we now have an ultra-short throw projector set up backstage for rear projection onto a center screen (roughly 12' h x 20' w ), to be used (mainly) as a backdrop for scenes in our theatre productions. Some of the backgrounds are basically slides, while others are animated, and lacking any dedicated video mapping software, for our first go at this we simply put the slides and the videos into a Powerpoint file and ran them on a MacBook Pro, with a USB-C to HDMI adaptor plus a 50' HDMI cable from there to the screen. It worked fine.
The new additions are two front throw projectors, mounted on lighting pipes over the audience, with matching screens on each side of the proscenium. The presence of *three* screens is setting imaginations ablaze, and the creatives now want to be able to send 1, 2, or 3 outputs to 1, 2, or 3 screens. Here is a visual:
Note the last item - a desire to be able to pretend we're having a rock concert and use a camera to capture an onstage speaker and project them in close up on the side screens. [In fact, the director wants to know if the camera can be WIRELESS so he can have the operator super mobile and make everyone seasick (that last was my editorial addition).]
Finally, with three screens to manage, we figure we need to see them from the front in order to operate them intelligently which means running all three from the booth, which is about 75 feet from the FOH projectors and 110' from the rear projector.
So, starting at the booth, can we run three images on one MacBook Pro and send them out as three signals somehow? What software would we use? Would we need to beef up the graphics card or anything like that? Then, once outside the laptop, I assume we'd need to use an HDMI extender setup (one big transmitter and three little receivers?) to send the signals over Cat (5? 6?) to the three projectors? My next question is whether we'd need something like the BlackMagic Smart Videohub CleanSwitch 12 x 12 6G-SDI, though I've seen some people complaining about a) the issues with transitions (momentary fade to black between images?, and b) the fan noise.
Anyway, you can see that I've read just enough to confuse myself. Any guidance you could offer would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks -
Stu