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Video Digerati

Help! I’m Synching!

If you have ever tried to play a long clip simultaneously on multiple media servers in a show, then you know what a real challenge it can be. Say for instance that your client pays you to create a three-minute product demonstration movie, and the content is delivered to you as one long clip. So you load it into your media servers, then start the clip while you watch them on your screens. Much to your dismay, you watch helplessly as the clip loses synch between the servers—that is, the same frame isn’t showing at the same time on all media servers. Simply starting the clip and letting it roll obviously isn’t going to be acceptable during the show. So how do we correct this problem? Can it be fixed in with programming?

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Video In Captivity

Media servers allow the lighting designer to easily call up and play back video clips in real-time via a lighting console. Another advantage, however, of using a media server is having the ability to integrate live video into the show. Since the media server is a computer, it can be simple to connect a digital video camera and incorporate live images into your lighting cues.

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Pretty As A Pixel

If you have a piece of video content, whether you have created it or purchased it, and you load it into a media server to use it in a show, and you think the digital lighting programmer’s work is finished, think again.

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Full-Court Press Before the Game

What do you do for the pre-game player introductions of a multimillion dollar sports team that changes the entire look of their show but that hasn’t already been tried? You add video. Well, that’s been done, you say. Okay, it has, but not quite like this.

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Programming with a Media Server

So, we’ve got our content ready, and we’ve loaded all of it into our media server. What do we do next? Here are a few things to get us started.

Let’s Talk Content

What are you going to do when…

  • The content you’re going to use for a show is being specially created for the gig, and the art department comes to you to ask about the media server’s specs?
  • During the first day of rehearsal, the client hands you a JPEG of one of the corporate VIPs and wants to use it in the show the next day?
  • You use your video camera to capture a beautiful sunset in an exotic location and you want to use it on your current fashion show? What’s the common theme in all of the above scenarios? The content will not all be correctly optimized, and it will need to be re-rendered and exported in a new format before it can be used in the media server properly. As the programmer of a media server, familiarizing yourself with the manufacturer’s specs regarding codecs and file types is an important part of your role.
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You Say You Want a Resolution

You’ve programmed with media servers before, but on this gig, the client wants you to use some original photos from the company’s last office party. Or maybe you want to create a unique piece of content featuring the company’s logo. In either case, it’s inevitable that you’ll need to optimize your content. Do you fully understand how the quality of the image affects playback through the server? Let’s take a look at a basic but important concept of any type of media—image resolution.

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Don’t Let Hiccups Get You Down

What happens when you arrive and the lighting crew or the video projection crew is waiting for you to tell them where you want the digital lighting projectors to be placed, but the truss isn’t hung or where you need it to be? What would you do if you arrived at the gig and the screens were already hung, but they’re 10 feet further than the optimal throw distance? These situations, and many more like them, are commonly referred to as hiccups. How you handle them is going to require thinking on your feet. Here are a few common sense things that may just help you get through those stressful situations.