Projecting projects
 

Many people here seem to make different versions of a movie to be shown on a TV set or a projector.

What are the main issues that must be considered in a projected version?

The cropping/picture size has been discussed earlier, but what about colour balance, saturation, brightness, sharpening etc.?

The best method would of course be adjusting things with the on-site projector, but are there any guidelines for general projection use (from a DVD source) ?

My experience is that the projectors vary massively in the reproduction of colours and brightness/contrast. Some of them you can adjust as any TV, but this is no guarantee that you will be able to get the picture you want. But if you are unlycky enough to get an old projector you cant adjust, you're stuffed if the picture comes out bad.

The best thing is if you know what projector you're going to use and do different tests to see how you have to treat your footage in post to get it right. It's all a bit sticky, but that's what we have to live with I'm afraid

Projected video makes shortcomings in sharpness (over and under) more visible. Y/C delay matching is important.For non CRT projection, avoid to get dark scenes because they get "gray" due to the low contrast ratio's of (most) non CRT projectors.

One of the problems with some video projectors is that they'll lose detail in the highlights fairly easily. I avoid that by using a waveform monitor and not letting anything go past 95 IRE. The only thing that is allowed to hit 100 IRE are light sources or bright speculars.

Also, keeping the blackest areas from falling below 7.5 IRE is essential, especially since it's part of the NTSC signal standard.

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions