High End Systems DL.3, User Manual

Page: 171 / 394

CHAPTER 12
Global Functions: Collage Generator™ Effect
DL.3 Digital Light User Manual 145
Spherical Mapping Tips
• If the fixtures are arranged symmetrically around the sphere, the adjustment made to the
various control Modifiers of Global and Graphic Spherical Mapping effects will be the same or
nearly the same when the fine tuning is complete. You can save time by selecting the Modifier
on all the fixtures you are using for the Collage and making each adjustment on all the
fixtures together.
• Projector Pan, Tilt, and Zoom also affect alignment.
• Don’t make small changes until the alignment is roughed in.
• When alignment doesn’t seem to be working, record and store your current settings, then go
back to the default values and begin again.
• The longitude angle is the angle between fixtures from the vertical axis of the sphere and
should be defined in your lighting plot. The plot should also give you a good idea of the
latitude angle. The final values and those theoretical values should be close.
Creating Custom Content for the Collage Generator Effect
There are two main steps to process HD footage into DL.3, DL.2 and Axon compliant media for
use with the Collage Generator.
First, acquire or commission High-resolution media footage or stills. In most cases, scaling and
cropping of the media is a simple process. However, certain types of media such as footage of
people or round objects like planets may require more sophisticated cropping and scaling to
optimize display in certain aspect ratios.
Then, save your media at Photo jpeg 95% or a non compressed format (these can be very large
files) to use as a master file. Or, if you are an intermediate video editor yourself, there are
many Video editing packages that will allow you to size and optimize the master for your
application.
Once the master file is created, you will need high-definition encoder software.
For more information on creating Digital Lighting content and selecting encoder software, see
Custom User Content on page 357 or go to
www.highend.com/support/digital_lighting .
Collages Using Live S-Video and SDI Input
DL.3, Axon and DL.2 media servers can create Collage arrays using live S-Video or SDI input.
All the media servers used to project a Collage need to be receiving the same source input sig-
nal to use video as a Collage feed.
For example, using DL.3 Camera outputting across a 2 x 2 20-K lumen Central Panorama Col-
lage, four DL.3 fixtures are assigned an output from the SDI-DMX Mixer Pro to each SDI input
and a fifth DL.3 fixture is used as the source.
NOTE: These features are not available in the DL.3F model