Displaying video in a theater
 

Hello all!

I received a request from a client to film a motocross race, do some very rough editing and play it the same night at a local theater. This probably sounds strange, but it is in a fairly small town where to track owner also owns the theater.

The rough editing in such short time will be tricky to say the list, but my question has to do with displaying it on the "big screen"

1. How will the quality look when projected that large? (I am using an XL1, not s btw)

2. What would be the easiest way to play it?
I was thinking to master it back to minidv, then hook up the video out on my XL1 to an LCD projector, the type normally used for powerpoint presentations. I am sure there is probably a better way.

Any suggestions are most appreciated.

Josh

That should work, or you could also feed the projector directly from the timeline in your NLE using a laptop. I've done both of these, using some "big iron" 10,000+ lumen projectors.

I suppose it depends on the actual projector however, so it would be ideal to try a test first. However in my case, I wasn't very happy with the quality of the image when the projector was fed s-video. The colors appeared washed out and the image was pretty soft. Plugging my powerbook into the projector through the VGA port (or DVI if compatible) yielded a much nicer image. This also gives the ability to jump around through the video without rewinding or fast forwarding a tape.

Like I said, it would be best to try all this with the actual projector you plan to use ahead of time to see what looks best. If you go the laptop route you could also have your camera handy with a tape version as a backup in case of computer glitches.

Another thought would be burning it to DVD and using a DVD player to connect to the projector via component video. That should also give better results than s-video. Or even better, you might use a DVD recorder that has firewire input, and connect that to the projector via component video. This could also be driven by either the camera or the laptop for redundancy.

Quality-wise, I think you'll be fine - depending on what people expect. We projected DV on a 44' wide screen in one of our operas and everyone was actually quite impressed. But of course we used a $125,000 Barco DLP projector :-) Once again, I would urge you to do some tests ahead of time in the theatre with the projector so you can judge the quality and still have time to make changes. It would also be helpful for you to see what footage from your camera looks like on the big screen before your shoot. Maybe you can get a local A/V place to bring by a couple different projectors to "audition" in advance?

Boyd...thanks so much for the great suggestions. Testing is definitely a good idea. I also never thought of simply connecting the laptop.

I think I will plan to use the laptop with a burned DVD as backup. Great ideas!

If you don't want to go the laptop route, a proc amp between the projector and source works OK too. You just need to create a video source that is designed for a projector, not a CRT display.