Projection Equipment

eejackson wrote on 5/3/2004, 6:31 AM

Hi all:

I have five weddings this year where the brides have requested that their beginning photo-montage be projected at the reception. I have never done this before and I really do not know anything about projectors. My thought is that I will output the montage onto DVD, then use a dvd player hooked up to the projector. I would assume that I am going to need some type of audio speaker set up as well.

Do you have any advice as to what type of equipement, ie..brands, lumens, price range....I should be looking at in terms of purchasing equipment. The majority of our weddings are in large banquet halls that hold approx. 250-300 guests. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Lori J.

Comments

richard-courtney wrote on 5/3/2004, 6:51 AM

Contact the banquet hall and find out what projectors, sound system, and available dates. Make sure you have an understanding who is renting
what so you don't endup paying for AV equipment that the wedding family as already arranged for. Or you didn't get equipment and they thought you were going to.

Most sound systems have microphone inputs (XLR jacls) either built into wall outlets or will be portable. You may want to obtain a "DB box" or XLR balanced to high impedance adaptor. A RCA plug to 1/4" plug cable will also be needed. Get these adapters ahead of time and test them the day
before so you don't need to make an emergency trip to an electronics shop
(Radio Shack?) minutes before showtime.

You can usually rent these if you are doing a small number of shows per year. I would talk with the rental place after you find out the size of screen the banquet facility has.

RalphM wrote on 5/3/2004, 7:22 AM

Lori,
My experience has been that these rentals are quite expensive compared to the purchase price of a comparable unit. If the customer is paying for the rental, no problem. If you are on the hook to supply the unit out of the gross revenues, you may want to look into buying one.

Pay attention to lumens and to resolution. The llower resolution units can do a good job with Powerpoint and other graphics displays, but they are not very kind to video. As you may expect, higher lumens and higher resolution equals higher $$$.

johnmeyer wrote on 5/3/2004, 8:40 AM

I have done several of these now, both for weddings and for sports banquets. A few thoughts:

1. The sound system is key. I had very good luck at one wedding reception where the groom had plugged his iPod into a standard PA system. We just unplugged the iPod and plugged in the audio output from the laptop. Worked great. It really helped, however, that I had brought along a very long cable. You definitely need to have a bag of connectors and adaptors to let you run a somewhat long distance, and plug into virtually any type of audio input jack. At the very least you need to convert from subminiature to RCA.

I find it easier just to stick with unbalanced (consumer grade) audio cables. Compared to all the other variables, the slight hum this might introduce is nothing compared to the background noises, etc.

2. Make sure you can get the room dark enough. I just did a sports banquet a month ago, and I still get a little sad that we couldn't find the switch to turn off some flourescents behind a valance. They really washed out the screen.

3. Bring copies of your video on more than one media. I always bring at least four different versions:

a: DV tape (my preference) which I play from my camera (best quality, easiest to set up);

b.VHS tape. Virtually every venue has a VCR, and many of the bigger ones have this plugged into their house projector. If you can't get the cabling figured out, you can just pop the tape into the VCR and go. This is my last resort, but it sure looks good when the alternative is to have no show.

c. DVD. May venues have a DVD player.

d. Laptop. I have a laptop that can output either through its VGA connector, or through a NTSC video output. Audio comes from the headphone jack. I play the DVD files. In some cases, I put a copy of the DVD on the hard disk (in case the DVD itself gets lost).

Why all this "belt and suspenders" redundancy? Because I have give hundreds of speeches and demonstrations over the years and none of them have ever taken place without some sort of equpment malfunction.

As to projectors, make sure you test it out ahead of time. The newer ones are pretty easy to figure out and also quite reliable. However, I did have one decide that its lamp was due for replacement, and it refused to play for more than two minutes without shutting itself down. If you are going to purchase your own projector, the InFocus X1 gets rave reviews over in the AVS forum:

AVS Digital Projector Forum

It is under $1,000, has all sorts of different input possibilities, and can serve as a very nice "cheap thrills" home theater device when it is sitting at your home.

Finally, here is a link to a wedding tribute I did last fall, based on material I got from the bride and groom's parents (you will need Real player):

Wedding Tribute

eejackson wrote on 5/3/2004, 10:40 AM

Thank you all for the input. I really appreciate your helpful insights, comments and suggestions.

John, I will take a look at your link tonight when I have a chance to actually sit down and relax for a while......looking forward to seeing it. Thank You for the link!

Lori J.