What's your approach for mapping an LED wall?

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JimmyP
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What's your approach for mapping an LED wall?

Post by JimmyP »

Wether your wall is a standard size or a bunch of fun shapes, what's your way of setting up the mapping? Do you have a standard template? Or do you generate an image in Photoshop? Or just throw content on the screen and hope for the best?
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Re: What's your approach for mapping an LED wall?

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Oaktown
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Re: What's your approach for mapping an LED wall?

Post by Oaktown »

Lots of hands-on experience, thorough understanding of software & hardware, pre-planning, a good calculator and a great eye for detail to name a few.

Most everything we do is planned to the pixel and preset before we go onsite to do an installation. Then, we make final adjustment to take all environmental factors in consideration.

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Re: What's your approach for mapping an LED wall?

Post by Arvol »

Joris's link is a FANTASTIC starting point! Really study that explanation and it will get you where you need to be.

If it is for a concert or festival (especially with guest VJ's) planning will take all most as long as the setup lol.
You'll want to follow the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid). The more simplistic setup and map typically will be your best friend. (Not all scenarios will allow for that, but in my case, 95% of the gigs will)

If it is for a permanent install, I would also follow the same rules, but in addition, I would also make a custom Premiere template for building content to match your screens. Giving this to your client will ensure for a very happy and smooth transition from your setup to their workflow (allowing them to build future content without them calling and asking for pixel counts and scaling percentages)

After all the pre-production and planning, I will build a video advancement sheet to send to all the people who will be touching my wall. A PDF of the pixel map, The composition resolution, each slice's X and Y position and resolution of said slice, and the exact spaing and or overlap of each slice/wall. This will make the transition between VJ's on changeover seemless, as they will already have the same map setup in their comp before they even arive on site. And will allow for them to do more "testing" during the 5-15 min changeover than doing "troubleshooting". If you're real nice, you caneven send over the Resolume output map as well (assuming they are using simple setups and nothing too crazy like map mapper and quarts or max).

Communication is key. Do a lot of pre-production advancing to make sure everyone is on the same page and that everyone is comfortable and satisfied with the setup before you even start to pull gear.

Practice makes perfect. The more people you work around, the more you will learn, and the more shortcuts and tricks you will learn.

Feel free to ask me any questions you have. This is an area of the industry I really enjoy. I may not have all the answers but with a good network of friends on here. I'm sure you'll get taken care of :)


*on a side note* the new MCTRL4K is going to make large festival life a lot easier :)
https://www.telematics.ca/novastar/nova ... controller

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JimmyP
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Re: What's your approach for mapping an LED wall?

Post by JimmyP »

would you mind sending me one of those PDFs so I can visualize what you're saying? I understand the concept and the idea, would be nice to see something already in place to go off of.

What I did at my last gig on NYE:
The led wall was a 12mm(64x64 pixel) wall that was 7 columns wide with gaps in between the columns. (1 panel wide x 6 panels tall)
I went into Photoshop and made a 1920x1080 image.
I made 7 columns of different colors that filled most of the image. Gave it a black background and exported it
Went into resolume and set my output as 1920x1080 and put the image on the wall.
In the advanced output, I created 7 slices (in the input section) and sized them accordingly to the 7 columns of color.
I went into the output portion and moved the slices around until they lined up on the wall.

The mapping wasn't pixel perfect as the wall wasn't 1920 x 1080 pixels but it worked well and video content shown looked correct.

now, how far off was i from doing this correctly? and tips or tricks would be nice! thanks guys!
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Re: What's your approach for mapping an LED wall?

Post by chenthemagician »

greetings, check out this link here viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11599 that will also get you thinking about how to get it pixel accurate.
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Re: What's your approach for mapping an LED wall?

Post by Arvol »

Sorry for the late reply.
If I read this correct. You have 64x64 pixel panels, With a tile count of 7 wide by 6 tall with an invisible strip (dead space) in between. so that would bring the total tile count including deads to 13 wide by 6 tall (every other wide tall is a dead tile).

This would bring your total pixel count to 832 x 384.
The nearest friendly resolution to this count would be 1024 x 768.
If you center your 832 x 384 wall into that composition it would look like the mapping I attached. You shouldn't see any red when you throw that image up.

(I use Nova, so if you use anything else, I wouldn't be able to assist in that)
In your processor I would set your wall start position at: X: 96 , Y: 192 (1024-832/2 for X) & (768-384/2 for Y)
Basically subtracting your wall pixel count from the composition resolution then dividing that number by to so you can center your wall into the overall composition.
Then I would make sure to add your dead tiles in between your active tiles.

Once that is done, Open resolume and set a comp size of 1024 x 768 and in your output create multiple slices if needed, otherwise just have a single fullscreen slice. and throw up the map and you should see a nice white outline on the edge of each screen and numbers to make sure it is mapped in the correct order. If you see any red, or the numbers don't match something was done wrong.


There's 100 different ways to achieve the end goal, this just happens to be my method.
Hope this helps you out in some way or another :)
Attachments
Map.jpg

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JimmyP
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Re: What's your approach for mapping an LED wall?

Post by JimmyP »

a lot of why I'm doing these updates as I learn more is so other people can do the same. there isn't really much content on doing this out there. please feel free to chime in and give tips or ask questions. Alright here's an update... this was my latest setup in Miami last week:

Hardware:
MBPr with Arean 5
Pulse 2 video switcher
NovaStar NovaPro HD
Absen X5 (5MM)

I had HDMI out of resolume into the pulse and HDSDI from FOH to the LED Processer. the NovaPro HD has 4 cat5 outputs so I dedicated each led section to their our data run. I was sending 1080i out of the pulse due to the LED Processor only accepting that. there was one DJ that ran all his own content from the stage and I had to route his video from the stage (over SDI) into my resolume machine as a camera input through a BMD mini recorder.

The setup consisted of 4 screens:
4x3 panels (384 x 324 Pixels)
4x3 panels (384 x 324 Pixels)
6x4 panels (576 x 438 Pixels)
2x7 panels (672 X 216 Pixels)
total res was 1344 x 654 and my resolution out of resolume was 1366x768 which was the closest "standard" computer resolution.

What did I learn from this setup:
I enjoyed the map I made but I think I need to alternate the colors on the panel positions so I can better see where the panels meet in the slices.

I created 3 layers to have the ability to send different content to different screens using the A/B function in Arena. I need to figure out a better way to do the cropping, the cropping filter didn't work correctly with all the content.


here's the map i created in photoshop.
Image

Here's what my resolume output map looked like.
Image

Here's a picrute of the whole rig.
Image
Jayme McColgan
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