Two Projectors

[BobJ452]

Running both front and rear cyc animations from a laptop with a native hdmi and usb/hdmi adaptor works a treat. We send several animated videos to one projector on back cyc then lower front cyc and use that for a while. When one projector is in use the other one should be blacked out. Which brings up a question. Does anything get sent to the not-in-in use projector? I.E. In PowerPoint if I want a space between slides I insert a black picture - but one with a little dot at the bottom. This keeps the projector from turning off after a while. I'm concerned my inactive projector might turn off during my SCS run show. Ideas? Comments?

And an observation respecting running two projectors: I found that I have to insert a 'Black" clip between my animations and - this is important - have to assign it to Screens 2 and 3 (plus a fade time). Works great. One projector fades to black, then next animation comes up on next [Go]. I tried merely fading between animation but when going from projector (1) to (2) my first animation continued on 1 whilst the other one came up on 2 (These animations are all loops). It was, as if the 'old' animation didn't fade out as I changed projectors. There's probably a logical explanation. But was wondering if there was a way to ensure blackouts of none active projector without having to insert 'black' slides between every animation.

[Mike Daniell]

When one projector is in use the other one should be blacked out. Which brings up a question. Does anything get sent to the not-in-in use projector? I.E. In PowerPoint if I want a space between slides I insert a black picture - but one with a little dot at the bottom. This keeps the projector from turning off after a while. I'm concerned my inactive projector might turn off during my SCS run show. Ideas? Comments?

For each projector (screen) selected in your cues, SCS will display black on any of these screens where no video/image cue is currently displayed. SCS does not turn off any projectors.

And an observation respecting running two projectors: I found that I have to insert a 'Black" clip between my animations and - this is important - have to assign it to Screens 2 and 3 (plus a fade time). Works great. One projector fades to black, then next animation comes up on next [Go]. I tried merely fading between animation but when going from projector (1) to (2) my first animation continued on 1 whilst the other one came up on 2 (These animations are all loops). It was, as if the 'old' animation didn't fade out as I changed projectors. There's probably a logical explanation. But was wondering if there was a way to ensure blackouts of none active projector without having to insert 'black' slides between every animation.

SCS does not cross-fade between screen outputs. If you have one cue that plays to screen 2 and the next cue to screen 3, and you want to 'cross-fade' from the first cue to the second cue, then you would need to fade out the first cue as well as fade-in the second cue. This can be done by including an SFR sub-cue in the second cue to fade out the first cue.

Does the above answer your questions?

[BobJ452]

It looks like I have to learn about SFR sub-cues I guess. In fact I know very little about sub cues so it will be a good exercise but with a show starting in a week I won't tamper with it yet!

[BobJ452]

Took a look. But have a question: Currently I have multiple video cues, some on one projector and some on another projector. During scene changes we want to black out. The way that I have been doing this is to insert between my video cues a simple image cue with a "black" picture. And I ensure that it fades in and out on both screens (projectors). It seems to work well but I wondered if there was a more professional way to do this fade between?

[Mike Daniell]

To fade to black you just need an SFR cue (or sub-cue) to 'fade out and stop' the video/image cue(s), setting the required 'time override for fades'.

[BobJ452]

Thank you. I will certainly look into this. One big concern I have is that, if either our ViewSonic or Optoma projectors is showing only black for a while it will shut off. To bypass this we usually show a picture that is completely black except for a tiny dark purple square in a bottom corner. It seems that even a couple of pixels other than black will keep the projector alive.

[Mike Daniell]

I haven't heard of that before. Can other users advise if they have encountered the projector shutting off after some timeout if a totally black image is displayed? My guess is that you could also keep the projector alive with a black image that contains a single pixel of, say, RGB(1,1,1), ie a very dark grey.

[Buyaicia]

I haven't heard of that before. Can other users advise if they have encountered the projector shutting off after some timeout if a totally black image is displayed? My guess is that you could also keep the projector alive with a black image that contains a single pixel of, say, RGB(1,1,1), ie a very dark grey.

I had never this issue, some times I had the projector on "in black" to play something at the end of the show only.

Regards,
Lluís

[BobJ452]

Some experience now with two projectors during rehearsals and to be honest I'm somewhat nervous. I think originally designed for audio cues I'm not sure if SCS is entirely happy with lots of video content. We're showing about 25 animated clips. They range from 3 to 10 seconds long and all are looped. Did a first entire run on the projectors today and one of the clips just gave a blank screen. The picture appeared as it should in the little in-screen monitor but not from the projector. Clips before and after were fine and I double checked everything was the same as its brothers. Then - on a 3rd run through it worked! No idea why which makes me very nervous. I.E. will it happen during a show?

Also when moving things around and editing the show. It can lock up! The screen will sort of gray out and that's it. CTL+Del being the only way out.

To add to my concerns when I press [Go] even though I have only 1 second fade (5 was too much) it is as if nothing happened. But if I wait for say 5 to 10 seconds things will move on. It scares me every time. This doesn't happen for every clip. It is as if the program is having memory allocation problems.

Bottom line, I like SCS but not sure if I cold fully trust it for a live theater performance. I'm using it on a Windows 10 64 bit machine. Just in case I am having to have two PowerPoint presentations standing by, one for the front and the other for the rear projector. This makes me very sad.

[Mike Daniell]

Video playback in SCS 11.8.3.1 is very stable so I'm puzzled by this report. A log file will have been created and saved in a folder named "SCS Logs" under "Documents", and the name of the file includes a time-stamp indicating when the log started. Please email me the log files from runs that had issues, and for each log file tell me what the problem was in that run and which cue was affected.

[BobJ452]

I am sorry - been busy but meant to own up to my own stupidity. I had the front Cyc halfway down and the back one all the way down so that I could observe both screens at same time. The clip I was whining about was very dark (Addams Family) and mostly located in the bottom half of the screen! Hence I didn't see it. Duh!

Last night was interesting: I had a call from the operator that the computer was on and SCS open but no SCS video was showing. The Windows Desktop splash was on both screens so projectors/computers were fine. I had her shut down SCS and just for completeness restart the computer. Things then worked as expected. I was thinking this might be the order in which SCS was started and the projectors turned on. I.E. If SCS was started and then the projectors turned on SCS wouldn't 'see' them.

So SCS seems to be running this busy show with no problems. And re the lock ups when doing a lot of editing (there is a lot of busy graphic work going on) I make sure now to pause every few minutes and Save. Trying to Save is an indicator of 'busy-ness". If you cant open the Save/Save as icon then its very busy so its best to give the program time to catch its breath.

[Mike Daniell]

Thanks for the update.

SCS does attempt to recover from a situation where the connected screens change while SCS us running, but to be safe, all required equipment should be connected and switched on before starting SCS.