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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: HDMI EXTENDER FOR DCI PROJECTORS
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 02-18-2018 11:04 AM
quote: Bradley J Sime
I would also try your damndest to convince the presenter to let you fellows run the powerpoint from the booth, and have them use a blue tooth wireless clicker, if need be. That works well for us. I've found that letting the inmates run the asylum, even with a great setup, always is more trouble than it's worth.
Agreed totally in principle. Another advantage is that if you ask the speaker to give you their Powerpoint file and run it from your computer in the booth, you know that the resolution, frame rate, color space, interlaced/progressive ... all that stuff is set up in advance, no nasty surprises or last minute jerry rigging, and you know that it'll work.
The problem is that one that anybody who works in an arthouse type venue that hosts visiting speakers regularly will be aware of: many of them, especially academics (who are used to operating Crestron or AMX-based podium systems, and hooking their laptops directly to them), will be very resistant to this. They don't understand that the a/v systems in university lecture theatres were designed with very different objectives in mind to those in movie theatres, and can be pretty intolerant when confronted with this reality.
Others have gone over the stage<>booth connection options comprehensively above, and the only thing I'd add is that this can be a significant pain in the rear if the necessary cable runs are not put in place when an auditorium is built or refurbished. You can be faced with a choice of drilling through walls or tearing down drywall to run cables, or having to use a wireless solution, with all the reliability risks that involves. So if you have a major refurb project coming up, even if you don't have the need for stage<>booth audio and video connections on the immediate horizon, it might be worth thinking about putting them in if the opportunity to do that more cheaply than as a standalone project presents itself.
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-18-2018 11:16 AM
Absolutely, whenever possible, put in conduit for an A/V feed 3/4" minimum but put in larger, if possible because one never knows what technology will want. With some of the newer network audio solutions (like Q-SYS) having EMT runs behind the screen can be advantageous.
Push come to shove, it isn't the end of the world to get an Ethernet cable to the screen area (behind the drapes, over the ceiling, pick a path, auditorium dependent. I'd absolutely take a clean conduit run with a pull-string though!.
And yes, the more variables you can eliminate (use house computers) the greater the chance of success. It depends on the theatre, the type of show(s) and management's desire for cost controls that will ultimately determine what system should go in. Not surprisingly, the cheaper one goes, the low the chances are for success.
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Carsten Kurz
Film God
Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009
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posted 02-18-2018 06:15 PM
quote: Leo Enticknap
Agreed totally in principle. Another advantage is that if you ask the speaker to give you their Powerpoint file and run it from your computer in the booth, you know that the resolution, frame rate, color space, interlaced/progressive ... all that stuff is set up in advance, no nasty surprises or last minute jerry rigging, and you know that it'll work.
Unfortunately, not necessarily true. Powerpoint presentations may reference external media, or use fonts that are not installed on your booth machine, both breaking the formatting or functionality of the presentation.
Also, quite a few presenters hesitate to give their presentation away, even for the purpose of their own presentation. So, in general, it is good to have both options. A third is, of course, to connect his notebook in the booth, and give him a clicker.
- Carsten
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 02-23-2018 07:52 AM
quote: Carsten Kurz
Unfortunately, not necessarily true. Powerpoint presentations may reference external media, or use fonts that are not installed on your booth machine, both breaking the formatting or functionality of the presentation. Also, quite a few presenters hesitate to give their presentation away, even for the purpose of their own presentation. So, in general, it is good to have both options. A third is, of course, to connect his notebook in the booth, and give him a clicker.
I never encountered the former (though agreed that it's a theoretical risk), and the latter only once. A bigger problem was the occasional Macosexual (a mental disorder that seems to be prevalent among professors in arts subjects) who only uses Keynote, when all we had in the booth was Windows/MS Office or Ubuntu.
As for Scott's suggestion of using VNC, once again, the issue is the physical connection. Windows Remote Desktop or Teamviewer would also work as software solutions.
I suppose you could try what I do when doing projector lens/screen file setups, which is to use a portable wifi access point (I have a used Apple Airport, bought from Ebay for $25 - takes up almost no space in a tool bag, and, when positioned on the front wall of the booth, easily provides a strong enough signal to reach the front row in every house I've worked in) to make the link. As long as you aren't sending high bandwidth content (e.g. video) and no Internet access isn't a problem if the switch in the booth doesn't have an Internet connection, that should work.
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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006
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posted 03-04-2018 03:14 PM
quote: Steve Guttag
Theatres seem to want to get away from having an employee attending
to events as much as possible so by putting technology in such that user
can plug in THEIR stuff and run THEIR show, it is cheaper to pay more for
a little more technology in the theatre than to repeatedly pay for employees
to tend to such rentals
I know what you are saying, but I've run into a LOT of clients, including some from
well known hi-tech companies who are totally ignorant about something as 'simple'
as plugging in a cable to run their own show.
I could write several snarky paragraphs about two corporate events I did just this week
alone that wouldn't have happened if the venue had left things up to the clients.
On one of them I had to re-render all their graphics, which were not actually part
of the show but were to run on two large screen monitors in an outer lobby,
because despite being given detailed instructions, they still showed up with graphics
files that were in the wrong aspect ratio and in a file format totally incompatible with
the system that was in use.
Also, although this is a somewhat esoteric exception - - I've worked a couple of big
shows at venues where "house rules" and union contracts prevent a presenter from
actually running their own presentations.
So, the presenter has a 'clicker' that operates a set of 'forward' and 'back' cue lights
backstage, where a union technician is the person actually changing the slides.
Sometimes, instead of the presenter & cue lights, an assistant to the presenter with
a copy of the script, sits next to the computer operator and cues the slide changes
at the appropriate time.
(I actually prefer this method, since if a wrong slide is put on screen, "the guy in the
middle" usually gets all the blame. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) )
Just for the record, this is how the 'supertitles' above the stage at the San Francisco Opera
house are projected. A union technician actually pushes the buttons that project the titles,
but gets cued by someone else with a copy of the music score as to when to do it. Ironically
they are both union members, but are in different unions.
(The tech-guy is a stagehand, the other person is a musician, I think)
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