Messages

1

Tools of the Trade / Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?

« on: Aug 23, 2008, 10:19 am »

The last show I SMed that had the most trouble was the dance production. LCD Projection constantly failed or went to blue screen without warning and was particular about the type of files and order they must be played in to work. That same show had sound issues and level checks had to be redone every night because it would change constantly. Plus the speakers in the house would only work every other night on average so we had to troubleshoot constantly. And some of the choreographers I dealt with did not understand that I do not have divine control over technology and when they rent new systems to work with our old equipment no matter how many tests we do before the audience comes will not guarantee a perfect show.

you can minimize your projection issues with some basic precautions
always set blueback to off.
send your signal through a digital scan converter or folsom screen pro, that way you can always switch to a backup source or a black screen/logo while projection resets.

format issues are specific to the playback software/hardware and not the projector, some playback programs work better with quicktime, some work better with wmv or straight AVI files, but thats an issue for your programmers and ops to hash out, show video can be a real trick if you don't know 100% how video works in the computer world