I would definitely play it from a dvd player as opposed to a laptop. I got a portable dvd player just for that reason. Laptop to projector communication is too sketchy to put my faith in. I'll leave the laptop to handle PowerPoint. We could probably start an entire thread just about the crazy things laptops have done to our videos while hundreds of people are watching and not-so-silently chuckling.

The number of lumens is dependant upon how big the screen is. When we design presentation systems, we use the following formula:

(Lumens * screen gain)/area = foot lamberts

Lumes = projector rating
Screen Gain = 1 for worst case but no more than 1.5 unless you know what it is.
Area is in feet squared (sorry if you are in metric land, conversion is 1 meter squared = 10.76 feet squared)

minimum foot lamberts should be 12. That is a pitch black room. I would shoot for at least 18-20 footlamberts.

Example: 2000 lumen projector, 6.5 (approx 2 meters) foot wide screen using 4:3 aspect ratio (most common in school auditoriums). Screen area is 75 feet squared so you would get about 63 footlamberts. Thats pretty bright, but if the screen size gets to 3.5 meters wide, you drop to 20 footlamberts. So if the screen is bigger than 3.5 meters wide, you will probably run into trouble unless the screen is good and has some gain to it.

--Is there an advantage to a higher resolution projector (ie 1024x768. Not with video, 800x600 shows video just fine.

--What is the most reliable way to show the video? Like was previously said, definately use a DVD player, not a laptop. Use the S-Video out of the DVD player into the projector. The project probably doesn't have component inputs.

Good luck

I play out of my DSR-11 in the cinemas however if you've got multiple videos to cue a DVD with a hidden menu is the way to go.
I've done one of these and the AV guys appreciated the simplicty.
Just a black menu with black text, black highlights etc. Then you use the number pad on the players remote to select the video to playout, drop dead simple.
Give the AV guy a cue sheet with BIG BOLD text, they usually work in near darkness.
Bob.

I've always used my laptop & windows media player without problems. You do have to deal with the WMP interface in real time though so big deal if a few people see a window for two seconds... we all have computers.

I did one show where I placed several short videos into a power point presentations with an intro still to start off the show and left it there throughout the lunch. When it came time to start the show I just hit the arrow key to begin the first video. I set it up so that a still image (photo of the guest of honor) would come back up after the video. Then I would say a few words, and play the next video. It worked very well.

I did notice in another attempt at this Powerpoint trick that the video quality looked worse under powerpoint than it did striaght from WMP so I'm not sure I'd do a Power point again unless I really didn't care about the video quality...which doesn't happen often.

I did something similar to Bob's hidden menu for a showing last fall except mine had the operator only having to hit the NEXT button for 5 interview segments.
I'll repeat the solution here for anyone interested (huge thanks to Edward Troxel aka jetdv for showing me how to do this). A second or two of black could be substituted for the logo.

Mike


Q:
I'm trying to put together a DVD for an upcoming banquet.
The DVD consist of 5 separate interviews in addition to a 5 sec. animated logo.
What I want is for the animation to loop until I hit the remote's Next button. Then it will play interview #1. At the end of this, it should return to the animation and continue looping until Next is slected again. It then goes to #2 and so on.

A:

Create a menu that is the looping logo. Have 5 menu options there. Make sure the FIRST one is the first interview.

Set the "End Action" of the interview back to the menu but set the SECOND interview as the button to be highlighted.

Set the "End Action" of the SECOND interview back to the menu but set the THIRD interview as button to be highlighted.

Repeat with the remaining interviews.

Now it should behave as you are wanting EXCEPT you'll hit ENTER each time instead of NEXT.

Wow, thanks. Great advice. I'll try the black menu DVD. But I think I'll add some subtle marks in the corners, or maybe a dark gray border on the black menu, just enough so the AV crew can see that the projector is ready. Then the 2 videos set as return-to-menu chapters 1 and 2. On my DVD remote I then just press "1" or "2" to que the videos, which come at different times in the show.

I think I'll also add "focus" and "color bar" slides as a separate chapters...for setup. (Anybody have a good PAL focus chart as a .png?)

And I could easily add a title slide (video loop) for the show, and credits...all queued up as numbered chapters...if they want it. Maybe they could get some more sponsor money for showing a loop of sponsor names and logos while people are being seated before curtain time. Hmmm...thanks for the help...the ideas are flowing now.

Another question...should I render all the video as progressive mpg for the DVD?

IIRC, progressive is only going to be useful to you if you have a DVD player and a projector that can handle component video. If you are using s-video or composite, the player is going to convert the progressive footage to interlaced anyway, so there's no advantage to rendering progressive.

--Scott

The DVD player has component out as well as s-video & composite, but the projector only has s-video & composite input (Acer PD116). The DVD player manual (Amoisonic DVD8500B) is in chinese (I bought it in Beijing ;-) but it probably doesn't say anything about composite/interlaced anyway. I don't have much time to experiment...so I'll leave it interlaced. (unless somebody thinks otherwise).

It's going to look pretty dull and dingy. That's the problem with school auditoriums and the projectors necessary to do justice to video shown on them. Schools can't afford a 7700-lumen projector and neither can most videographers.

Rent one.

John

My 02. - that is a pretty low power projector for that size of a crowd. My guess is they will try and project that image on a 9 by 12 screen. If you could get the room pitch black it might be o.k. but if there is some budget for renting a 5k or higher projector it shure would make a difference. With standard def the 800 by 600 resolution should work fine.

Just my quick 02. - good luck!