Colour correction for rubbish projectors - Part 1

Hey - don’t all die of fright, but I’m posting a new post here again.

I won’t bore you with a detailed explanation, but suffice to say that a young family and a new job in a different city, house sale, purchase, rennovation etc. etc. meant that VLOBLIVE posts weren’t high enough up my priority list to surface for a long time.

Anyway - enough excuses -  how about a post, you all say…

Well I was finishing off a video for showing in a Church today and the church in question had a rather limited video projector - I think it’s around 2000 ANSI lumens and it doesn’t cope too well in strong sunlight.

I was thinking how to colour correct for this and thought I would note down my musings here.

This first post concentrates on preparation…

Great projector calculation info at projectorcentral.com

I don’t usually post ‘hey look at this on the web’ type posts here at VLOBLIVE, as I like to focus on content, but this one is too good not to pass on.

Ever wondered what the throw distance of a projector is, or how the brightness is affected by the screen size etc. etc.

Pretty much every numerical calculation required to spec out a new projector is shown in the wonderful projector calculator at Projector Central .

Read on for more info on why this particular interactive calculator is so useful

Gig Blog: Learning to say “No”.

I did a gig a while back where the organisers were VERY keen to have IMAG.

We had the gear, we had the crew, we had the time, but we said no.

Read on to understand why…

Understanding Video-over-Cat5 cable

 There’s a growing trend in live and installation video circles to move towards the use of Cat5 twisted pair networking cables for long video and VGA runs.

As with many new technologies, it’s easy to get caught out, so read on for a quick primer from an engineer’s perspective…

Using iTunes for audio and SFX playback at live events

Hi all,

iTunes is a great music player app for organising your music library and buying tunes from the iTunes store. However with a few very simple tweaks it can be a very effective live audio and SFX playback system. Read on for more details…

What’s happened to VLOBLIVE?….Still here!

In case you are wondering why things have gone a bit quiet here recently, I should mention that due to a new arrival in the family VLOBLIVE activities have taken a lower priority for the moment.

I hope to resume posting soon.

Dave

Converting Quicktime video files into WMV for PC playback

If you create video content on a Mac, but you need it to be played back on a PC at a live event, you may run into the situation where you are using a PC app that doesn’t play back .mov files (yes, it happens - especially if the app is built on the windows media player framework….like most PC song projection apps are!)

Here are a few options…

Creating ‘fly-by’ videos with Google Earth - UPDATED

Here’s a rough and ready guide to recording ‘fly-by’ videos using the popular Google Earth application. This can be great as an introduction video for someone visiting an event from elsewhere around the world or as a backdrop to a phone interview etc. I have found it is much more engaging than a simple map slide.

Playing back interlaced video on computers

If you are playing back video clips directly to a projector from a PC or Mac, and the clips are interlaced video, then you have probably seen the ‘jaggies’ effect where fast moving edges take on a comb effect, due to the two fields of the video capturing the motion at slightly different times. Here’s some suggestions for how to get rid of that distracting effect.

Tips for sending & receiving BIG media files electronically

With the size of media clips, graphics files and even powerpoint files growing larger all the time, transferring these files electronically is becoming more of a headache.

Here’s some suggestions for reducing the headache for you and your VLOBLIVE clients…

Capturing stills from 1080i HDV

Here’s a quick tip on exporting still images from an HDV video sequence. There are various occasions where this might prove useful. The one I came across recently was needing stills to add to the cover of a DVD of an event. The HDV format makes this slightly less than intuitive, so read on for a quick guide. 

How to go ‘widescreen’ with 4:3 gear

With the increasing popularity of widescreen TVs and DVDs, it’s hard to find an LCD or DLP projector now that doesn’t have a ‘widescreen’ or 16:9 aspect ratio mode.

Coupled with this is the increasing number of cameras and camcorders that are either true 16:9 (HDV) or have a widescreen mode, and the idea of ‘going wide’ can seem quite attractive.
So how can you get best use of these features for a VLOBLIVE gig?

Read on to find out…

Welcome to the new-look VLOBLIVE!

Hi, If you are a regular reader, and you have got this far, you will have noticed that not only has VLOBLIVE moved it has a whole new look as well.

You should bookmark http://www.vloblive.info for the site and re-subscribe to the RSS feed as http://vloblive.wordpress.com/feed/ .

Read on for more details…

Doing IMAG with remote pan/tilt/zoom cameras

I recently did a gig where we used the built-in remote control pan/tilt/zoom cameras in the venue to do IMAG. The gig was a big (250 people) choir with a very small band and some soloists and speakers etc. Audience of 1000 on two nights.

Using PTZ cameras is becoming a popular configuration in some church installs due to the low visual impact of the PTZ cams compared to manned cameras on tripods, so I was curious to see how well it would work for a live switched IMAG gig going to the projection screens. Read more to see how it went…

Mixing from onstage vs in a control booth - which is better?

Which is better - mixing onstage where the action is, or mixing in a control booth?
Read on to see how the two compare…

Is there a place for HDV in low budget live video?

HDV is the new buzz in video circles - it seems to offer the impossible; High Definition video at the price (and datarate) of Standard Definition. Great for low budget video production, but what about VLOBLIVE gigs? Should you care? How can you make use of all those extra pixels?
Read on to consider some of the issues raised by this new video format…

Use a cheapo LCD TV to mimic LCD projectors are showing.

One way to better ensure that what you see is what the audience get is to use an LCD TV as your program monitor.

PC based video file player software - two options

One of my quests is to find inexpensive software that works well for playing playlists of video files directly from a PC or Mac. Here’s another contender: AV Player HD from Neuromixer

Free Software to play SWF files in Powerpoint

If you ever have the need to play Flash animation files (SWF) inside a Powerpoint presentation, then there’s a hard way and an easy way. Here’s the easy way - SWF Point Player from GlobFX . Read more to see how it solved our problem…

Watch out for cheap analog pro video mixers!

You have maybe seen cheap pro analog video mixers for sale on ebay or elsewhere for knock-down prices.
Just be careful that you know what your are bidding for/buying…

Choosing cameras to use for IMAG at VLOBLIVE gigs

In the kind of budget range most VLOBLIVE gigs are operating, your camera choice is going to be limited to pretty much whatever you can get your hands on. However if you do have some choices, or if you are
looking to invest in purchasing some cameras, here are some pointers to help you choose.

matrox dualhead-2-go - superwidescreen support for projection.

Here’s a great idea - an external box that looks to your computer like an extra wide display, but in fact it splits the signals across two displays.

Basecamp - online project collaboration tool

Recently we have started using the Basecamp online project collaboration tool to plan live video events and it has been very successful. Here are some questions and answers about that product and how it might fit in to a live video event planning.

New budget analog video mixer from Datavideo

Something of a rarity - a new well featured analog video mixer that would be ideal for VLOBLIVE gigs. This one is from
Datavideo - the SE500.
Read more for some of it’s unique features…

Split Quicktime Movies over multiple screens on a Mac

Another useful Mac app here- this one is called MaxiFrame and it lets you play a QT movie across multiple monitors or projectors from a (fast) Mac.
READ MORE for how this could be used for VLOBLIVE gigs, and how it could be improved.