Versa-tile in London

Hi All,

Did our first show with VersaTile at the weekend here in London.

It was used on The UK heat for Eurovision Song Contest. The 8 panels were arrayed in a 1x8 formation under the main video screen.

The show was projection heavy using Catalyst V3.0 to control projectors and LED wall and the VersaTile segments were placed under the main projection screen as a late addition.

For this reason they were not controlled from the main console so I controlled them separately and tied my "looks" in with what was happening on stage.

I used Pixelmad and Hog PC as control devices for the show.

VersaTile

VersaTile is controlled by the VersaDrive unit. This unit has an RS232 input which acepts a configuration file. This file tells the unit what order the Tiles are arrayed in and what settings ie. White balance, brightness, reference voltageand so on to use.

Once the file is sent this connection is no longer needed (unless you need to change any of these parameters).

The versa-drive also has a DVI video input.

The configuration file also contains information detailing which part of this video input the VersaDrive should "look" at.

The versaDrive then maps this part of the DVI input pixel for pixel to the apporpriate tiles.

I used HogPC to control the images on a MacG5 running the new pixelmad software and outputted this to the VersaDrive.

I used a 1.8GHz Mac G5 with single processor and the two layer version of PixelMad. The unit had a Radeon 9600 Graphics card.

I put the card in mirror mode with both outputs set to resolution 800x600 with 75Hz refresh.

This meant I could see the whole screen on my monitor and simultaneously output the DVI signal to Versa-drive without the need for a DVI splitter.

If you did not wish to use mirro mode you could also use a DVI splitter box

By placing the "mix" window of Pixelmad into the top left corner of the screen and then designating VersaDrive to look at this corner I was able to play back movies and images on what was effectively a video screen with resolution 40x5.

Though small, at a distance this produced some great effects when using the same content as the main projectors.

I scaled the content using the scale function of Versa-drive and was able to speed up and slow down the content.

Similarly I could use the CMY mixing to match colours in with the looks on stage.

The DMX mapping of pixelmad is almost exactly the same as Catalyst and can be controlled using the Standard Cat V3 D56 profile in the new build of Hog 2 software/Hog PC software.

Having pixelmad control greatly increased the speed with which I could jump form from clip to clip and made colour matching very easy indeed.

The system has also been used by Christian Choi in the States on the Superbowl running from Catalyst D56.