LED screens 101
The following is a re-print from the good folks at LiveDesign. It’s a great article on LED screen technology originally done by Fabio Aversa of Eurodisplay.com. Looks like it’s only up for a month then it’ll have to go into digital oblivion, so read it while you can! While you’re at it, have a look at Eurodisplay’s website- it’s chock full of great info about LED’s, LED technology, and outdoor displays.
Reel Video Systems Screen Demos
Here’s a couple of videos from my friends at Reel Video Systems. Their roll-up screen are SICK and must be seen to be believed- keep in mind these can be viewed in broad daylight and still look good!. They offer a number of roll-up size options including 4,5,6, and 8 meter…..I know the guys that work there and they don’t mess around. They calibrate in-house, and can deploy screens up to 35′ high using a ground mount system. If you want some quality work with a beautiful result give them a call!. I ran a short piece on RVS a while back , but here’s a refresher if you missed it.
Elation EPV762MH Moving Head Video
I guess I’m not exactly sure why you’d want to have moving video panels ….apart from the eye-candy factor…or if someone gets real creative and hangs them sideways to make a wall out of them…but they are pretty cool! Elation Professional’s EPV762 MH is a high-resolution 7.62mm pitch moving head video panel that can rotate just like a moving yoke light fixture, panning a full 540° and tilting up to 265°. The EPV762 MH’s sweeping motion gives video displays extra exposure at shows and events, since the screen is viewable from all sides and every angle. Equipped with 4,096 tri-color (red, green, blue) SMD LEDs and featuring 2,000-nit brightness, this screen can be used for high-res videos, graphics, text messages, special effects and more, “broadcasting” them around the room with its smooth pan/tilt motion. Part of the company’s (more…)
Wood as Bones, Light as Flesh- FAIL Collective @ Mapping Festival 2011
“The structure is in essence a narrative organism. This being is telling its story without words or any human form. Its body is its language. This body has its own temporal vitality, a re-interpretation of the human condition. The wood has the value of bones and flesh is no different from the temporality of light.
As the audience moves around the sculpture, they are inevitably part of the story unfolding around them.
FAIL is the collective of electric kettle, SILANT, Lucy Benson and fRED”
And so you have Wood as Bones, Light as Flesh- a piece done by the FAIL Collective. Recently, videomapping has been going the in the direction of giant, glitzed-out, psychedelic graphics on buildings and architecture so it’s refreshing to see stuff like this where the projection AND the structure have such interplay. I like the idea that the “sculpture couldn’t live without the projection”, to quote Ilan Katin. Artists like this are pushing mapping in a great direction and it’s their ideas and concepts that will continue to make this art form beautiful. I sincerely hope to see more outstanding pieces like this from FAIL.
The technical details: All of the animations were done in After Effects. They used 3 Optoma, wide angle, 3000 lumens projectors. They rendered one big file consisting of 6 minutes worth of audio and video, and dropped it into MadMapper to playback as a loop. MacBook Pros were used for the production of the video, and a Mac Pro with a TripleHead2go for playback.
Low-res Storefront Skin in Frankfurt
Check out this low-res LED skin on the Zeilgalerie mall in Frankfurt. Th structure was in need of a facelift and what better medium than LED? With the size and spacing of the pixels it looks like they’ve pretty much maxed out their design in terms of complexity, but such are the vagaries of low resolution- you can only display so much. The second vid shows some details of the face and some close-ups.
LED Wall from Moment Factory
Check out this great interactive LED wall installed and designed by Moment Factory. Low res, but we like it anyway! Motion tracking is all the rage these days…
Opera in Indiana
For anyone not acquainted with Opera, you’d think Indiana is the last place you would find great grand opera. Not so. The IU Jacobs School of Music is second only to the Met when it comes to facilities in the Midwest, and the school is probably one of the best equipped opera training centers in the country. Witness this weekend’s premiere of Vincent, the story of Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, as proof. IU also has one of the most advanced HD streaming servers available- click here to watch the opera live (this weekend) or to see any of the past performances. The quality is outstanding! Their Facebook page has some great photos of the performance as well. Projection plays heavily in this one….although with all the press I can’t find a single reference to the technical end. Stay tuned and it’ll surface…..
Digital Projection 3D Mapping
From the folks over at Digital Projection U.S.- this great display of animation on the side of their building in Atlanta. They used the Lightning 45 1080p, a behemoth projector capable of 30,000 lumens. The content was served up from Integrated Visions Productions. Digital Projection 3D Mapping Atlanta, GA from Integrated Visions Productions on Vimeo.
DLP explained
And on the heels of the last video from http://www.engineerguy.com explaining LCD technology, we get this from our friends at Texas Instruments, the folks that hold the patent and are largely responsible for inventing and propagating the DLP chip. And for those of you who don’t like video (hard to believe there are any of you if you’re reading this) here’s a great printable article.
Media Servers- Green Hippo
HD media playback can be a problem. Â For a long time, it was available only to the highest-end decks and even then, it was tape based and single layer. Â Not anymore. Â The advent of media servers in the last few years changed the playback landscape forever. Â In a nutshell, a media server is a very fast computer capable of playing back many layers of HD content in various forms. No longer do you need to worry about the content for your large projection projection or display project being played back reliably. They are most commonly a rackmount deal and controllable from a number of different sources, mainly lighting consoles sending DMX or other devices sending RS232 as a control protocol. Â Today we’ll look at the Hippotizer HD from Green Hippo.
Besides a great name, the Hippo HD is one of the most used media servers on the market today on everything from rock-and-roll to broadway to high-end award shows. (more…)
Tools, Tips, and Tricks of the Trade
PART 3- Signal
So you have a high-end projector, LED wall, or display and now you have to send it signal. Â Whatever you do- do NOT use “the little yellow RCA” jack. In fact, that type of input doesn’t even exist on most professional gear and is dying a rapid death. The type of signal you use in your project will have a HUGE impact on quality. The end-result will largely depend on the the type of cabling you use, the source of your material, and the means to deliver that material. Whatever the case, you’ll want to use the right signal. Most content starts in the digital domain with HD video(either disc or tape-based), 3DS, Photoshop, Cinema 4D, (hopefully not) Powerpoint, or any other content creation software. In some cases you’ll have digital stills (which you’d run through PS anyway). We’ll cover those technologies in future posts, but the fact is you’ll need to deliver their output (whatever it is) to your display whatever it may be. (more…)
Can’t Wait For This One…
The folks over at PLSN have a great article on the upcoming Chemical Brothers tour. Â Not only am I a HUGE CB fan, but they’ll be using the G-LEC Solaris+ 3d system. It’s a low-res hanging “curtain” of orbs that utilize “pixel spheres” to accept digital content. Think of those little christmas bee-lites hung as icicles around a house…only with video being sent to them and you get the idea. U2 used this back on the Elevation tour to great success. Â The beauty of this type of technology is the versatility and not so much the resolution capability. Â You can create ridiculously 3 dimensional looks and match all the color with content that is already running to other projection sources or LED walls. Â I doubt this tour will come anywhere NEAR where I live so if you get a chance to see it drop us a line and send some pics! Â We’ll cover this type of LED technology in a future post but for now….dig it!
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