Ultra Wide 21:9 Panoramic Projector

A vender sent me a link to this projector and it’s a pretty cool concept.  It’s an ultra wide 21:9 format, almost equivalent to two 4:3 projectors side by side, which is 24:9 if my mixed fractions conversion is correct, ha ha.  A good point they bring up is that by the time you edge blend two 4:3 projectors by about 10% you end up at their 21:9 format.

Specs look good, higher than HD resolution, 2560 x 1080.  Says “up to 7500 lumens”, output ultimately depends on the lens used.  I’d be curious to see what the price is.  Since it’s kind of a novelty projector I kind of expect it to be expensive.  But if you’re replacing two projectors with one for a specific setup then that’s worth a little extra money.  It would just be a little hard to justify if one projector ended up costing more than two projectors.  Either way it’s always worth a look!

 

Interesting Setup For Synchronizing Music, Lights, And Sound

My friend Will Doggett from LoopsInWorship.com sent this video to me a few weeks ago.  With all that’s been going on I just got a chance to watch it and it’s pretty cool.

Music, Lights, Sound

Basically they pulled off a pretty unique way of syncing everything together with the music in a preprogrammed way but the trick is that the artist still has creative freedom to change tempos, repeat sections, whatever he wants.  So there’s the precision of a preprogrammed show without locking the artist into a setup that can’t be changed.  Pretty impressive stuff!

Night Of Worship

We just finished another great Night of Worship.  Over 3,000 people showed up to worship with us and it was awesome!  We put together a projection setup like we have done in the past and overall things worked very well.

I don’t have any shots from the event, it was too busy, but here are a couple of pictures I took during setup and testing.  Next time I’ll get some pictures during the event.

Getting Ready For Our Next Night Of Worship

We just set up some projectors for our next Night of Worship.  We rented three 12,000 lumen projectors and blended the image together resulting in about a 70′ wide by 18′ tall image.  Everything is being fed from a MacBook Pro running ProVideoPlayer using a Triple Head 2 Go.  We have 18 songs tonight, about 118 video cues in PVP.  Lighting will be fairly simple since we’re not hazing the room but will compliment the videos.

Blending the three projectors is fairly straightforward.  We’re not edge blending where the three projectors overlap a little.  I’m using the existing architecture on our back wall to try and hide the seems.  So where there’s already a break in the wall that’s where I have the projectors meet.  Simple and works pretty well.  One day when we have our permanent setup everything will be blended and keystone corrected to perfection, ha ha.

Since these are rented projectors I kinda have a checklist in my head for setting them up.  Who knows how they were used last so I have to go through each one and make sure they’re set up right.  I check for front projection mode so my image isn’t backwards.  Then I check the image settings like color and brightness.  With larger projectors they typically have multiple lamps and sometimes they’re not all on.  Maybe the last event didn’t need 100% output or a lamp could be dead.  I need everything I can get so I double check that.  A good rental company will include a spare lamp or two just in case.

Color bars are a good way to test things.  If the image is dark or the colors don’t match it’s easier to spot with color bars than your favorite motion background.  PVP has a built in color bar slide that I’ll use to check color and brightness. Once I know that the three projectors match I’ll start to blend them together.  I like to start with the middle and work my way out, then I know the image is centered and level.

PVP has a decent blend grid built in, that’s what I’ve been using.  It has vertical center and horizontal center lines, I’ll square those up with the dead center of the stage first.  Then I’ll use the center marks and grid to line up the other two projectors.

It really just takes trial and error and a little bit of time.  Most larger projectors have lens shift options which is easier than physically moving the whole projector to line up the image.  From there’s you just have to play with zoom and the legs of the projector to tilt the image if needed.

I’d say it takes about 15-30 minutes to get everything set up now that we know where to place the projectors and we rent the same ones each time.  The very first time we did this setup it was probably closer to an hour of trail and error. Once you’re all set you should have an image that looks like one large projection to the audience.

Since we don’t always have this set up I played around with a program called Aeon during a soundcheck.  It’s a pretty cool program that does live motion backgrounds that can react live to the music.  The video isn’t great since we were on the catwalk but you get the idea.  It looked pretty cool, definitely going to use this for a concert in the future.

Radian Motion Time Lapse Device

I’ve been into photography for a while now and lately motion time lapse has had my interest.  Check out Timescapes.org for some awesome examples of what I’m talking about.  Trouble is to get some of those amazing motion shoots requires motorized tracks and motorized pan/tilt heads all working together through software and it gets a little pricey.

Lately though some cool stuff is coming out to put those kinda shots into the reach of amateur guys like me.  I posted earlier about the CineMoco motorized track system.  With that you can build some great dolly movement into your shot.  Now there’s the Radian motorized pan and tilt system.

I found this on Kickstarter (my new favorite site, ha ha).  And it’s a really affordable, well thought out, pan and tilt system.  All the little details are on the Kickstarter page and their page.

Basically you can get one unit, for only $150, and that’s it, you can start to capture panning time lapse photography or video.  Spend a little more and get a second unit and now you can pan and tilt.  This modular approach allows you to just get what you want and save some cash.  Down the road if you decide to upgrade just buy another unit and put them together, pretty sweet.

A sucker for gadgets I ordered a pair with the L brackets so I can do pan and tilt movements.  Since they use standard tripod mounts I’ll be able to combine this with the CineMoco track for full pan, tilt, and dolly movement.  It’s gonna be awesome!

So that’s it, one way of getting some nice movement into your shot without breaking the bank.  I guess the only bummer is that now I have to wait for the production run.  I should have my hands on them January 2013.  My CineMoco track will ship next month so I’ll get some time to play with that before the Radians show up.  Keep an eye out for some footage!

Cinetics Just Launched A New Kickstarter Campaign

Cinetics launched their CineSkates about a year ago and now they have a new Kickstarter campaign.  The CineMoco system is their new product line built around a dolly track system.  What interests me is the Cinemoco device itself which can control the motorized wheels and the camera.  Controlling these together can allow for some cool motion time lapse stuff.

The system looks pretty comprehensive, seems like they have done their homework.  Price wise it seems pretty good compared to other motorized systems I’ve look at.  Definitely worth checking out!

CineMoco Kickstarter Campaign

Update:  I was wondering what the minimum step is on their motor system.  I wrote them and they answered right away.  They said their system can take steps as small as 0.1mm.  So ultra-smooth time lapses shouldn’t be a problem.  I also noticed that you can purchase additional lengths of the SkateTracks for more moment if you want.  I actually just pledged to pick up a system, ha ha, couldn’t resist!  They say I should have the system in October so keep an eye out for a hands on review!

Element 3D Is Out!

Video Copilot’s Element 3D plugin for After Effects is now out!  I’ve talked about it a little already and there’s plenty of information on their website but basically it’s true 3D inside of After Effects.  There are some limitations but for motion graphics and title work it does 90% of what you would want a dedicated 3D program for.

I’ve only been playing around with it for a little bit now and it’s really cool.  It’s pretty easy to create some nice graphics and animations.  You can check out all of the Element 3D tutorials here and get the idea of what it can do.  The different software packages are available here.

Blender 3D Program

If you’re like me you occasionally need to do something in a 3D program but you don’t want to shell out thousands of dollars.  I want a 3D program I just can’t justify that kinda money, I don’t need it that much.

In going through the tutorials on VideoCopilot.net I learned about Blender.  Blender is a free 3D program and a pretty sophisticated one at that.  Even thought it’s free you still get a complete 3D toolset with materials and physics, pretty impressive.

I may dive into it deeper but for now I’m just using it as a tool to help composite in After Effects.  Using blender I can create some true 3D title graphics or create and edit other 3D objects to export into AE.  If I get real courageous I may use it to create some better models for when I use Light Converse.  I need some better people models in there.

That’s it, I’m not familiar enough with it to show a tutorial or anything but there are already plenty of resources out there for that.  It’s available on Mac and PC, go ahead and download it here.

Element 3D After Effects Plugin

VideoCopilot has been a great resource for me to learn After Effects and start to create my own motion graphics.  They also make some great tools for compositing and motion graphics.  I like to support sites like them so I’ve purchased many of their products.  It’s not out of charity completely, they really have good stuff that improves my work.  Plus supporting them keeps the tutorials coming.

Now they’re close to releasing a new plugin called Element 3D.  This product helps bridge the gap between 3D created in a dedicated 3D app and the control of keeping everything inside of After Effects.  Plus the approach they are taking to 3D should keep things very fast when it comes time to render.

The traditional workflow would be to create a 3D object in a 3D program, render it out, then bring it into After Effects.  If  you need to tweak or adjust the 3D object you would need to go back into your 3D program, edit, render, re-import. That will still be necessary for really intense scenes but it’s a lot of extra work when you just want to create 3D text and simple shapes.  That’s where Element 3D will help bridge the gap and keep you working inside of After Effects.

It’s not out for another week, personally I can’t wait to get it and play around with 3D inside After Effects!  Price will be very reasonable, I think I heard $150, but don’t quote me on that.

Update:  They announced pricing today.  $150 for the plugin alone up to $250 for the plugin and some extra presets and models, very reasonable.  They also released a video showing off some features and the user interface, looks really good!  Check it out here.

Update 2:  More information!  It’s available tomorrow, 7/10/12.  There’s more bundles, some more tutorials, it really does look sweet!  Check out the latest update.