150-minute HD Screening

I want to project uncompressed HD material (720/24pN) to a large audience (~250 people). I will be projecting at a local art house theater. Ideally, I would have a laptop connected to a descent projector and play directly from a FCP timeline.

The sequence is 150-minutes, and I want to screen the project uninterrupted and preserve the most quality that I can. Wouldn't the best way to do this be to output directly from FCP to a projector?

Any thoughts?

Andy O'Neil
FCP v. 5.1.4
Mac OS 10.4.7
4 GB RAM
PowerMac G5 Quad (2.5 Ghz)

uncompressed HD from a laptop?!?! no problem, and be sure to get there in your flying car - hahahaha

Let's also not forget that real-time playback is not a Final Cut forte. If this is an important screening, then output to tape beforehand and screen that. If you're playing 150 minutes of uncompressed HD, I wouldn't even count on a desktop G5 with SATA RAID to playback 150 minutes straight without dropouts, errors and crashes.


www.derekmok.com

Your zero emission hybrid flying car!

Ditto Derek on playback from deck. I advise all critical screening to be played from a tape and deck.

CHL

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

720p 24PN...sounds DVCPRO HD to me. That you can play back. You'll need a SATA RAID on location connected via Express 32. And you'll need a 500GB SATA Raid...and either a DVCPRO HD deck to play thru, or a Matrox MXO.

Uncompressed HD is not capturable, editable, nor outputtable on a laptop. Not yet.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Thank you for the responses.

Shane,

Laptop DVI to Matrox MXO DVI out to projector ... is this the correct workflow assuming I have a RAID?

Thanks,

Andy

Yes. And TEST this. Play it a few times to make sure it will. Playing something from a computer is very risky. Who knows if it will crash, or if the drives will lock up. Tape is always best. But, if you can't, then test test test.

GOod Luck


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

So which is it? DVCPro HD or Uncompressed? Your initial post said uncompressed.

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

ALWAYS have a back-up tape if you are projecting for 250 people,and have a monitor ready in the cabin so you can cue up to the exact point when crashes occur..I was happy with a tape once this happened.

great advice, thanks.

Chi-Ho Lee, it's DVCPRO HD (720p/24pN). I used the term "uncompressed" in a different context. I meant for "uncompressed" to mean anything from creating an M-PEG 2 to downrezzing to an SD timeline, etc. -- any form of compression that would decrease quality of the raw footage.

Andy O'Neil
FCP v. 5.1.4
Mac OS 10.4.7
4 GB RAM
PowerMac G5 Quad (2.5 Ghz)

SATA Raid may be overkill.

Here is the bandwidth:
DVCPRO HD for 720p24 8 bit 4:2:2- 1280x720 (really 960x720 stretched) - 5.4 MB/sec

Looks any firewire drive should be able to handle that. I wouldn't screen straight from FCP. I would make a QT movie at native res and screen from QT player since all your layers and effects would now be one stream in QT player vs. multiple streams of video and audio from the timeline.

Not sure why you'd need the MXO. Your DVI out of the laptop straight to the projector if possible.

Best of luck. Sorry about the jab before. Just joshing.

CHL

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

The term UNCOMPRESSED means something else...so try to avoid using that term. If it is DVCPRO HD, use that.

He'll need the MXO to get full quality HD out of the computer. DVI out only spans the monitor, and if you do Digital Cinema Preview, it is a far lesser quality image.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]