Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tim Urner]

Brian Kent Tennyson wrote on Sun, 01 July 2007 20:14

Tim Urner wrote on Thu, 28 June 2007 23:44 (put away the slide rules, real world here) Yeah, your right. Just guess, that always works well. (Yes, that was sarcasm.) There is NO substitute for carefully planning and time tested formulas.

I will take it as sarcasm, OK don't guess - tour other facilities and see what a 8, 10, or 12' screen looks like. You may just be able to save a few dollars. (The obvious thing is that the projector/screen combo suggested seems like undesirable image quality will happen) Since a brighter 16:9 will cost more...

Or just ask to borrow some money from Brian's church

[Brad Weber]

Tim Urner wrote on Mon, 02 July 2007 20:57

I will take it as sarcasm, OK don't guess - tour other facilities and see what a 8, 10, or 12' screen looks like. You may just be able to save a few dollars.

Quote:

I think your screen size is a little on the big side. I would back off to at least a 14 if not a 12. People will be able to see a 12 or 14 fine. (put away the slide rules, real world here)

Both of these seem a bit presumptuous without addressing what it is that is being projected.  As was discussed earlier, for projecting something like EasyWorship/MediaShout or basic I-Mag, you might get away with an even smaller screen than a 12' or 14' high screen, which would save even more.  But if you need to project standard 12pt font text and have to serve all the seats, then even a 15' high image might be a minimum.

Speaking of seats, you often also need to consider the attendance.  If the vast majority of services only fill 3/4 of the seating, then you may not worry as much about the back 1/4 or those off to the extreme sides in a fan shaped room.

So using the math is appropriate, but you do first have to determine what it is you are really trying to achieve.  Without doing that, anything is pure speculation and guesses.

[Tim Urner]

Brad Weber wrote on Mon, 02 July 2007 22:57

Tim Urner wrote on Mon, 02 July 2007 20:57 I will take it as sarcasm, OK don't guess - tour other facilities and see what a 8, 10, or 12' screen looks like. You may just be able to save a few dollars. Quote: I think your screen size is a little on the big side. I would back off to at least a 14 if not a 12. People will be able to see a 12 or 14 fine. (put away the slide rules, real world here) Both of these seem a bit presumptuous without addressing what it is that is being projected.  As was discussed earlier, for projecting something like EasyWorship/MediaShout or basic I-Mag, you might get away with an even smaller screen than a 12' or 14' high screen, which would save even more.  But if you need to project standard 12pt font text and have to serve all the seats, then even a 15' high image might be a minimum. Speaking of seats, you often also need to consider the attendance.  If the vast majority of services only fill 3/4 of the seating, then you may not worry as much about the back 1/4 or those off to the extreme sides in a fan shaped room. So using the math is appropriate, but you do first have to determine what it is you are really trying to achieve.  Without doing that, anything is pure speculation and guesses.

This is obviously for those who have been late to the party as I was. I think the concepts are the same and timeless.

Brad,
I was being presumptuous, after all this is a church AV site not a boardroom or school site. About 90% of churches that I know use their screens for worship support 95% of the time, lyrics, videos and scriptures.  The original poster stated that there was some budgetary reasons. That being the case don't overlook the 3000 lb elephant in the room. Screen/Proj/room combo was wrong, design had to be modified. We can spend all day with our slide rules saying that they need a huge screen but at the end of the day the budget is the budget. What 6000 lumen 16:9 projector would you use that would not blow the budget?

[Mike Yates]

Well...been awhile...thanks Tim for your response...of course there is no one solution when developing an a/v system as many factors are considered, and compromises are made as priorities are set.  I researched for six months before I finally purchased and installed our system.  Being an old sound dude and not knowing anything about projection I posted many questions on several different forums and researched specification and equipment heavily.  

Tim emailed me and asked about final results so I thought I'd post  this link to a post I made on another forum with those results.                   http://www.churchmedia.net/CMN/projection-systems/29265-than k-you-cmn-community.html

I forget which formula I used to figure out how big a screen I needed but the furthest seat from the screen is 100' and we installed a 12' x 16' screen.  Someone made a comment in one of my posts on another forum to go as big as you can afford and responses I received regarding screen size included similar sentiments.  I could not have been happier with the screen size we selected.

There were a couple things that saved some budget...by the time we were ready to purchase I had learned enough about projection to do the install myself, which I used to upgrade equipment...mostly the projector, and we switched to a 4:3 format...together this saved about 25% of our budget.  The 16:9 system would have required at least a 21' x 10' screen...between the screen and projector we would have blown way past our budget.  Brad calculated I needed about 9,000 lumens to project properly with the amount of ambient light so the extra savings was used wisely to upgrade the projector.  I am glad I did as there is a bright crisp picture even with all lights on during mid day lighting conditions in the sanctuary.

My current endeavor entails researching computers and software for video and image editing.  I'm leaning towards purchasing the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium software for creating multimedia...yikes...now there's a learning curve for me!

The whole system turned out AWESOME...thanks to everyone here who helped!

[Brad Weber]

Glad to hear it all worked out so well!

The 16:9 format issue is one that many people struggle with.  Unless 16:9 images are a common source (something that is actually happening more with WXGA and above laptops becoming prevalent), then going with a larger 4:3 screen can be a good option to address both formats as a 4:3 screen can support 16:9 video via letterboxing.  If you do the calculations, a 4:3 screen sized for 1/6 the viewing distance provides a letterboxed 16:9 image height that is 1/8 the viewing distance, right on the recommended ratios for computer and video media viewing.  However, if you minimize the 4:3 screen to start with, say 1/10 the furthest viewer, then letterboxing 16:9 images may not be a practical option.  So if you're not sure about format, using a larger 4:3 screen and letterboxing any 16:9 images is one possible approach.

[Karl P(eterson)]

Mike Yates wrote on Tue, 03 July 2007 03:48

My current endeavor entails researching computers and software for video and image editing.  I'm leaning towards purchasing the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium software for creating multimedia...yikes...now there's a learning curve for me!

We have editors on final cut, premier pro, and vegas all with pretty good success.

Personally though I think Final Cut Express on a 20" iMac /w 2 gig of memory is about the perfect pro-video-light package.

For what its worth.

Karl P

[Mike Yates]

Brad Weber wrote on Tue, 03 July 2007 11:36

Glad to hear it all worked out so well! The 16:9 format issue is one that many people struggle with.  Unless 16:9 images are a common source (something that is actually happening more with WXGA and above laptops becoming prevalent), then going with a larger 4:3 screen can be a good option to address both formats as a 4:3 screen can support 16:9 video via letterboxing.

Having the ability to show both formats factored heavily in finally choosing the 4:3 format...16:9 material shows great and 4:3 stuff is huge and makes for a powerful presentation...definitely perfect for our church at this point.  Perhaps when I become better at creating our own material material for our services we will consider going all 16:9...I really like the wide format...and maybe in a few years the HD projectors will come down in price enough so a smaller church like ours can afford it.

Karl P(eterson) wrote on Tue, 03 July 2007 16:05

We have editors on final cut, premier pro, and vegas all with pretty good success. Personally though I think Final Cut Express on a 20" iMac /w 2 gig of memory is about the perfect pro-video-light package. For what its worth. Karl P

Thanks Karl!  I'm glad someone posted about their preference on video editing.  I'm still researching which way to go, PC or Mac, and which editing software to use.  I have worked for a large newspaper for 22 years and I know they have only used Macs in their pre-production and design departments since I've been there, and Macs have been the industry standard for many years.    I'm just a little hesitant to jump into new operating systems since I'm already climbing a steep learning curve with the editing software...but I still want to make the best choice and if Mac is it then I'll do it.

Of note in the research I have done so far is that PC's have made great strides and gained momentum in this area over the last few years and I don't know that it is as clear cut as it used to be.

[Karl P(eterson)]

Mike Yates wrote on Tue, 03 July 2007 18:20

Thanks Karl!  I'm glad someone posted about their preference on video editing.  I'm still researching which way to go, PC or Mac, and which editing software to use.  I have worked for a large newspaper for 22 years and I know they have only used Macs in their pre-production and design departments since I've been there, and Macs have been the industry standard for many years.    I'm just a little hesitant to jump into new operating systems since I'm already climbing a steep learning curve with the editing software...but I still want to make the best choice and if Mac is it then I'll do it. Of note in the research I have done so far is that PC's have made great strides and gained momentum in this area over the last few years and I don't know that it is as clear cut as it used to be.

While it is true that PC's have come a long way in the past few years for editing (thanks in large part to vegas and premier pro), there is still a platform-stability difference that is hard to overcome.

What I mean by this is our premier pro and vegas installations are running on top of x86 workstations (XP Pro) and our final cut systems are on a collection of iMac's, MacBookPro's and MacPro's.

We find that on average, our editors working on the PC's get stuff done about 10% faster, but everyone agrees the quality coming out of Final Cut is superior to anything (except perhaps Avid, but we don't use it currently) on the windows side. Why that is no-one can say exactly, but if we create the same video on the two platforms, the final cut edited file just looks better - of course YMMV.

Where we do have problems is the long term stability of our PC's. Most of our macs we never have to touch "They Just Work", not to say they are perfect, but by and large they treat us well. Our XP machines on the other hand are a completely different matter. After 6 to 7 months they just start to crawl and while you can generally nurse them another month or two, after that its time to clean them off, reformat them and build them back up.

Of course my opinions here are just that, but they are based on some amount of experience.

Hope this helps!

Karl P

[Mike Yates]

Karl P(eterson) wrote on Wed, 04 July 2007 00:20

...Where we do have problems is the long term stability of our PC's. Most of our macs we never have to touch "They Just Work", not to say they are perfect, but by and large they treat us well. Our XP machines on the other hand are a completely different matter. After 6 to 7 months they just start to crawl and while you can generally nurse them another month or two, after that its time to clean them off, reformat them and build them back up. Of course my opinions here are just that, but they are based on some amount of experience. Hope this helps! Karl P

That's interesting...since I have never used a Mac I did not know this, and I do understand what you mean by PC's slowing to a crawl.  I've noticed it on my home computers and our office computers, and your right on about the length of time it takes to slow.  These PC's are used mostly for generating documents and surfing the net and I delete cookies and files at least once a week.  We purchased a higer end new PC for our church projection system...it worked flawlessly for about six months then it started slowing and we started having problems with programs like Easy Worship and Powerpoint not working together properly.  

What's frustrating is I am not a computer whiz but I do know a fair bit about PC's as I have been using them for the last 25 years, and I can't get the programs to play well together like they first did when the computer was new...guess I'll probably uninstall/reinstall the apps first and if that doesn't work I'll look into doing as you do and clean the drives and rebuild them.  

I often wondered if this problem occurs because of the amount of spyware that is out there while surfing on the net.  I think most spyware programs are written to infect PC's not Mac's and I do know from experience spyware will slow a PC considerably and some programs are very hard to detect and erase because they make registry changes...this might be why your PC's work better after you reformat/rebuild them as you are clearing/resetting the registry entries...just a thought...

[Stephen Maloney]

Mike Yates wrote on Wed, 04 July 2007 19:32

That's interesting...since I have never used a Mac I did not know this, and I do understand what you mean by PC's slowing to a crawl.  I've noticed it on my home computers and our office computers, and your right on about the length of time it takes to slow.  These PC's are used mostly for generating documents and surfing the net and I delete cookies and files at least once a week.  We purchased a higer end new PC for our church projection system...it worked flawlessly for about six months then it started slowing and we started having problems with programs like Easy Worship and Powerpoint not working together properly.   What's frustrating is I am not a computer whiz but I do know a fair bit about PC's as I have been using them for the last 25 years, and I can't get the programs to play well together like they first did when the computer was new...guess I'll probably uninstall/reinstall the apps first and if that doesn't work I'll look into doing as you do and clean the drives and rebuild them.   I often wondered if this problem occurs because of the amount of spyware that is out there while surfing on the net.  I think most spyware programs are written to infect PC's not Mac's and I do know from experience spyware will slow a PC considerably and some programs are very hard to detect and erase because they make registry changes...this might be why your PC's work better after you reformat/rebuild them as you are clearing/resetting the registry entries...just a thought...

I agree that on average Macs are more stable than PC's, but generally i find that this is mostly true for average users who do not know much about computers and want them to "just work", in my experience these are also the people who don't understand that wireless networks need/or can be encrypted or that regular maintenance is required for a car to run. This is the market that Macs were designed for. For configurable and power for a lower cost PC's are the go. You just need to spend a little bit more time and love on them optimizing an maintaining it.

There are a lot of simple things you can do to delay (or get rid of) the slowdown mentioned by other posters. One thing that i do to simplify this process at my church is that i use something called a restore card, it's a pci card http://www.amtsoftware.com/Rebounce-Recovery-Card/ or saw one on eBay for $8, so basically you do a fresh install, put everything you want onto the computer, configure programs then set the restore card. Now no matter what anyone else installs/modifies/spy-ware once you reboot the computer it is restored to the exact point after your first installation so no spyware, good as new, most can also be set to restore on command and you can always store all video editing stuff on another drive so it doesn't get "restored" I think you can also do this with norton ghost or other software like that...

Other things you can do if you do not like this path is to just get registry cleaners/anti-spyware/virus scanners and also a good defragger then schedule them to run once a month or so at night when nobody needs the computer.

Or you could just get a Mac... but they get cluttered eventually all the same.  
 

[ProSoundWeb Community]