BAck in the mid 90's I worked on a corporate presentation room where they had multiple automated shows with everything from the doors to lighting to the AV to a 20' diameter
turntable that the people sat on being controlled. I remember one show where when you hit start, the entry doors would close, one front projection
screen would
drop and the first part of the presentation would be displayed via a
CRT projector, then that
screen would retract, the
turntable would turn and another
screen would
drop for a second video segment. Then that
screen would would retract and the
turntable would turn to a
podium for a live presentation. Then the
turntable would rotate again for a rear
screen multimedia presentation that involved five slide projection stacks (left, center, right and two overlapping left/center and right/center, each stack with three Ektagraphic III-E projectors and Dove X2 dissolves) and three (left, center, right)
CRT video projectors on a rear
screen. At the end of that the lights would come up, the exit door would open and the lights would literally flash in sequence to guide people out.
The sources for the projectors included multiple VHS and 3/4" U-Matic decks and several
Mac and PC computers, I believe that
laser disc was added toward the end of my time. Audio followed the video, there were multiple speakers so the audio always came from the
screen in use, one of the first
Yamaha consoles that allowed recall. Control was via an
AMX system with a touch panel and wireless remote, along with controlling the presentation systems it also provided some interaction with some of the computers and applications. Along with the show described there were several others and they changed or were revised on a regular basis. There were several people in multiple locations involved in creating the content and writing the control code but being local I was the lucky one who got to make all the systems work and
nail down all the timing for any new presentations or changes to existing ones. The
AMX code got so large that it was impossible to store the uncompiled code in the
processor, since multiple people had to access the code they added a dedicated PC connected to the
AMX controller just for programming it.
I also got involved in another little fun one for the 1996 Olympics here. They had a map covering two wall of the Visitor Center and where each
venue was located they had a video
monitor that would display video clips for the events being held at that
venue. The sources for the video were about 25
laser disc players, one per display. However, there were only two different
laser discs, each one had the clips for multiple venues, and none of the clips had been edited to be the same length. So we had to independently control each player via serial control from a
Crestron control
system to
play a loop of the correct frames on the disc. The control
system also automatically started the presentation at the same time every night.