Friday 6/24/22
Grant was off today helping the Bike Zoo. I went over to Wendy’s and helped her make up the waiting room curtains. The curtains has turned out to be a bigger job than anticipated. We got the 12 panels done and I took them over for Grant and me to hang up next week. Once they are hung we will determine what needs done to fit in the doorways, etc.
The projector arrived in the morning, so I picked it up on my way back down to Eureka and started trying to work it out. It was a long afternoon.
Saturday 6/25/22
Frustrated with the projector situation, I worked on it from home with just my journal and google. I stated the requirements I needed to test with the projector:
Need:
- Have a few inches to spare on all four sides
- Be in focus at top and bottom.
- Have a couple inches in the back for Grant to move room.
Nice to have:
- Not be under AC
- Not sit on floor directly
- Not bleed too far off the side of the structure.
Other issues:
- Fix waviness of screen
So goal for today:
- Get it up on 3:4 looking focused. It can be 5′ 3”
- Figure out how to kick out 3:4 in Touch.
- Figure out how to adjust corners in touch.
This made for a long day.
I discovered the Corner Pin Top and a really helpful video and .toe file that let me drag the corners instead of typing in values in a trial and error style. I combined this with the Crop Top and it make things much easier.
I fussed moving the BoMaker Laser TV projector (the new one) around to different spaces and heights. I found a good position and lined it up and ran my tests. Except there was one test I didn’t have on the list it failed. More on that in a moment.
With the additional 50% length of the room, the layout in Final Cut gets wider. This means instead of a little empty space above and below the usable area, I have a lot more empty space. So the area used (relative to the 4k field). This results in a smaller area allocated to what goes to the projector. Which means lower resolution once I crop it out of the 4k. I had to test if it was too low. I was trying to do it streaming from mac to PC, but for some reason it was 4k on the mac but the PC was receiving 1080. I figured out what was doing that, but it took a while. (And now I don’t recall what it was. I think it was a TD thing, but I also had to make sure that the resolution of the second screen on the mac was outputting 4k).
I also tested exporting test files from FCPX like I would for production and put that on the PC. Then I compared the look (color and resolution) between the local file and the stream coming from the mac. I could see they were comparable. There’s a little change in color for some reason, but I already (to great frustration) had experienced that in the last version of Eureka.
So the good news was I didn’t have to upgrade the files to 8k, which would have presented more issues. Not the least of which is that I don’t think the PC could take in 8k from the mac…
Now even if you didn’t understand all that, you can probably understand that it took all day to test this projector that I waited a week for.
And then I saw the issue that knocked this projector out of the running. I had the intro screen up, which is white text on a black field. Rainbows. Ugh stupid rainbows. As I’ve written before, the so-called “rainbow effect” is something that about 10% of the population has to deal with. We see these weird remnants of red, blue, and green on projector screens and it is extremely annoying. I didn’t think it happened with lasers, but clearly it does. It wasn’t as pronounced, but dealing with the rainbow effect in development is liking letting a few hundred roaches into the room you are working in. Sure you can get things done but it’s not pleasant and you see them everywhere.
So the projector is being returned.
On the upside, I did figure out a lot about how to test and the whole Crop Top and Corner Top solution is super helpful no matter what I do.
The RBE basically narrows my choices down to Epson. They are the only company that seems to care about eliminating them. Which means (in my price range) I would have to get the 4k version – the LS500. But looking at the specs, the throw distance is just too far. I’d be spending $4000 to have a height of 4 feet (same as the old Eureka) or I can reduce the current one I have to a little over 4 feet (to reduce screen door effect) and not spend anything. (I can’t return the one I have unfortunately, so it’s $2k sunk cost).
I had the AC cranked all day and it was not that cool. That’s another issues to fix.
Sunday 6/26/22
I woke up and meditated and had a few thoughts.
The best one and possibly the worst one is about the limitation of the projector I’m using. It’s only about 4′ high on the screen. So that is disappointing because we designed for about 6 feet. But we just can’t get it six feet without looking really screen door like. My thought was: buy a second projector of the same kind for the bottom of the screen. This, in theory, would get me all 6 feet – and then some. But the downside is that I would have to get the seams aligned or do some edge blending in TD. That might be really hard on a screen that isn’t flat and neither Eureka or the floor of the house is square. I would also need to update TD and probably get another graphics card for an additional HDMI output.
I found an AC window unit that I think will be good for the waiting room. I was trying to avoid this since I don’t want to interrupt the curtain look, but people would hate it if it was hot a lot more than they’ll hate looking at the thing that keeps them cool.
I also decided on how to blackout the doorways to the room without buying a bunch of stuff or creating too many more holes in the walls. I’m going to use the curtains and rods I have at the house in my office and buy a couple more. I won’t be needing to cordon off my office for heat until winter and by that time I’ll hopefully have the money to have a more attractive solution.
Later in the day I bought an AC unit for the waiting room and some curtain rods. I had to drive up to a northern Home Depot because the ones near me didn’t have it. I found it on Amazon but saw that it was available now and cheaper at Home Depot. I think I’ll be really glad I bought this for the waiting room.