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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => Pro AV Forum => Topic started by: Kyle Malenfant on May 28, 2014, 12:44:09 PM

Title: Large outdoor projection
Post by: Kyle Malenfant on May 28, 2014, 12:44:09 PM
I have an upcoming outdoor video art presentation where we're required to project onto and fill (more or less) a 120'W x 60'H building wall. The building is sandy colored with no windows and flat surfaces.

We're not mapping the content, but simply using the building as our screen. The location is an industrial site, with minimal light coming from the street. There is a clear line of sight to the wall, and distance of projector to wall is not an issue. We have 100s of feet to work with.  Event is at night.

Power is being supplied by 3phase tie in and distro.

Source will be a MacBook Pro.

What is the best way to go about this project?  One projector? Two/3 edge blended?  Can I get a recommended lumen/distance spec?

Thanks so much!
Title: Re: Large outdoor projection
Post by: Thomas Lamb on May 28, 2014, 07:27:07 PM
Do you have a rental budget? What's the expectation of good enough? At 60' high a HD format projector would be 60 tall and 106' wide. Will that work? You could do some blanking and crop the too and bottom. At that size 40,000 lumens would probably look ok as long as there isn't a ton of light ambient.
Title: Re: Large outdoor projection
Post by: Jordan Wolf on May 29, 2014, 03:31:45 PM
Kyle,

If you want to playback full HD or higher-than HD resolution content (2k, 4k, etc.), you'll probably want to look into a dedicated media server that is purpose-built for use in such a manner.  Dedicated video outputs, fast HDDs, lots of RAM, dedicated Graphics cards, etc. - they're on-trick ponies, but they do it well.

As for the projection itself, double-stacking & converging may be required, as well as blending 2 stacks of double-stacked/converged projectors due to the width you're dealing with and the ambient light that you will, inevitably, have issues with.

It's not cheap or easy to execute something like this and have results that you see from viral videos on Youtube...there is a lot of skill and gear needed.
Title: Re: Large outdoor projection
Post by: Steve Kennedy-Williams on May 30, 2014, 10:50:48 AM
As said, the project will require multiple high-lumen projectors, a video processor to split the image across multiple projectors, and skilled projectionists to converge and blend the projectors.

I work for a production company that specializes in projection and video production with experience doing site installs. One project was projection mapping an image onto the side of the Fields Museum. That project required 8) 25,000 Lumen projectors.

 Send me a message if you'd like a quote.

Title: Re: Large outdoor projection
Post by: Kyle Malenfant on June 01, 2014, 07:26:40 PM
Thank you all for the pointers. I relayed the notions you presented me to the customer and gave them an estimated cost.  As it turns out, they are willing to pay for a 10K rental and will rely on us to establish a reasonable medium between image size and brightness.  They are fully aware the whole building won't be covered, and they're fine with that.

Thanks again for the insight, certainly helped me spec out the job requirements.
Title: Re: Large outdoor projection
Post by: Ben Lawrence on June 11, 2014, 11:28:47 PM
Im interested to see how this works out. Let us know the results on this.
Title: Re: Large outdoor projection
Post by: Keith Broughton on June 12, 2014, 07:53:28 AM
As it turns out, they are willing to pay for a 10K rental and will rely on us to establish a reasonable medium between image size and brightness.  They are fully aware the whole building won't be covered, and they're fine with that.

Thanks again for the insight, certainly helped me spec out the job requirements.

10k is pretty light for a job like that. Especially considering it's not a proper projection surface.
Hopefully your customer will appreciate the "cost to result" compromise.
Let us know how it goes.