Projection Mapping Novice needs "presentation view"

oillyoowen

I'm using a macbook pro (El Capitan) to projection map to a sculpture.

I need to see a "presentation view" projection on my piece while mapping on my desktop.

When I double click on "projector" in Izzy, "output" does not show this view as I thought it would.

What am I missing??

MANY THANKS for any insights! It's getting late...

oillyoowen

Using Isadora 2.5.2

Thanks in advance for any replies, this is urgent!

oillyoowen

OK! So I think I understand that "stages" is supposed to result in what I'm calling "presentation view".
Unfortunately, when my projector is connected to my mac, this basically crashes Isadora (menu bar is greyed out, stages will not display, nor will "projector"/"output").

Thanks again, for any thoughts!

oillyoowen

Interesting.

When "stages"/"force stages" doesn't crash Izzy, it also doesn't result in a "presentation view" in my (physical) projector.
There MUST be something I'm missing.

Mirroring is off. I've eaten lunch. Totally talking to myself, but there's nothing more important in the world right now so I might as well blog on a forum.

LPmode

I think I understand what you're trying to do.

You can set up a stage preview using the user controls page. View-> Show controls. There on the left side panel you'll see the stage preview item. Place it and scale as needed. Double click will give you options for which stage and refresh rate. This may affect performance but not much, but you can delete it when not needed.

oillyoowen

@LPmode thank you!!

I'll try this when I restart Isadora.

For about 5 minutes, I actually had success with "stages" going directly out to my projector, but it crashed again when I closed "stages" and "projector" to apply color to a mask. This is frustrating.

To clarify: I have a custom media cabinet with an opening at the top. A glass cube rests on that opening. My projector is aiming up to map multiple layers of video into different sections of the sculpture, so I'm using concentric masks (picture a target) in Izzy. Which is crashing more often than not.

When I get it back up I'll try your method!

Fred

@oillyoowen I think you need to turn off display have separate spaces in the oSX system preferences. As for the crashing, this is abnormal, and could come from a variety of things. I would:

make sure no other software is running (pretty basic rule for media playback)
give your machine a restart
check your movies are in an appropriate codec (proress 422 is a good one)
setup your external screens or projectors (mirroring off, screen order and resolution - OSX also presents some limitations for this) before you launch Isadora and then set the stage preferences to output to the correct outputs. This will let you see the output on the projector/external screens. You have a choice to see the stages as small windows on your desktop screen when no projectors are connected (stage preview), or to output the stages full screen to your projectors (stage output)
Now show your stages (command+g), or force the small preview windows - one for each stage you have set in the preferences (shift+command +f) and you should see the output.

You also have an option to kind of do both, you can output to external screens or projectors and see the preview windows at the same time (there is one for each external output), this is done via the instructions from @LPmode. This may or may not be useful to you, and depending on your GFX card (super important for video work obviously, and many even expensive macs do not really have one) this may reduce performance (nothing to do with Isadora but a function of image processing on any software and any platform). Adding your computer model and specs as well as operating system version to your forum signature can help us help you out.

Checking out the Isadora examples and tutorials will help you a lot, Isadora is a powerful realtime video tool and seeing the output is a basic function that should not crash your computer unless there is something wrong with your hardware or software, each software makes their own lexicon, so presentation mode is a reasonable assumption, however Izzy uses a slightly different way of talking about functions, that logically relate to live performance, hence the names 'stage' and 'actors'

Fred

oillyoowen

@Fred Thanks very much for your detailed reply.
To answer your question, here's what I'm using:

2010 macbook pro
2.66 GHz Intel Core i7
4 GB memory 1067 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB

My media (H264) is copasetic with my projector's aspect ratio, no other software is running. Mirroring is off. I've succeeded for short amounts of time to map with stages, but Isadora consistently crashes.

Fred

@oillyoowen What is the frame size of your media (1920 *1080 etc)?

What is the frame rate of your video?
What is the target frame rate you set for Isadora?
What is the native resolution of your projector?
What version of the OS are you using?
What version of Isadora are you using?
Are you playing the files form an external disk? If so what is the connection and kind of disk inside the enclosure?
When you are playing the video and showing the stages what are the readings for the cycles and FPS (bottom right corner of Izzy)?

H264 is a codec but it can have many many settings that can make it harder for your computer to decode (bitrates and profiles and iframe distribution), your computer is quite old not so powerful, a modern piece of software could well export a video that your computer will have trouble with. I would go for prores for sure.

I would also test with the isadora examples and see if the crashing still happens, they are pretty light on resources. I would guess that you are running out of resources trying to play and map this video, proress can make it easier on your machine, but depending on your needs, you may need access to something a little more up to date.

oillyoowen

@Fred
*What is the frame size of your media? 1280 x 800
* What is the frame rate of your video? 29.97
* What is the target frame rate you set for Isadora? I don't know how to set frame rate
* What is the native resolution of your projector? 1280 x 800
* What version of the OS are you using? 10.11.6
* What version of Isadora are you using? 2.5.2
* Are you playing the files form an external disk? If so what is the connection and kind of disk inside the enclosure? Yes: USB and I don't know
* When you are playing the video and showing the stages what are the readings for the cycles and FPS (bottom right corner of Izzy)? These are of course changing, but cycles: between 160 - 230; FPS: between 28 - 30

H264 was recommended by Ian Winters, who teaches Isadora (and is helping me a bit on this project), but I'll see if ProRes makes a difference.
Is there anything I can do to improve things short of buying a new computer?

Many thanks!
OO

Fred

@oillyoowen I would go first with prores and play the files from your internal drive, (USB 2 is super slow and most likely you have a slow drive in your enclosure) and see how it goes. You can test drive transfer speed with blackmagics disk speed test included in the decklink drivers for your platform.

H264 can be ok, but there are so many parameters for this codec it is not really enough to say h264. Proress is a little more locked down.

You can set the target frame rate in the preferences.

The stats show your machine is running out of power doing what you want, try prores, and if it still crashes I would test on another more powerful machine. I and many others certainly run heavy patches with Isadora all the time, I am guessing it is your machine that is doing it.

PS are you doing anything to the speed of the movie? If you just play the movie with a projector, no effects or mapping, how does it run?

oillyoowen

@Fred OK, re-exporting now to prores, after shortening my piece as well...

I'm not changing the speed of the movie, no, and it plays fine sans mapping.

Can I upgrade my memory and expect to improve anything?

Thanks for all of your thoughtful replies!
OO

Fred

@oillyoowen memory could help a little, generally SSD drives and a GPU will be the most effective, unfortunately you cannot upgrade the GPU but an SSD is possible.

Skulpture

Could you give us an update on this please?

Showing Stages should not cause a crash - there has to be something going on here to make that happen.

oillyoowen

@Skulpture Sure, I had to sleep.

I wish I understood my issue well enough to give you a clear answer, but as I mentioned, I'm a novice. This is my first project in Isadora, and due to many circumstances, I now have today to work through it. Likely my computer is not robust enough to run the project as designed.

I have re-exported my media in prores and shortened my clips. This seems to be making the files run more smoothly.

Stages now does not result in what I'm calling "presenter view", or a full screen image from my physical projector, however. I don't understand why this feature sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

Currently, that's all I know. I appreciate everyone's feedback very much.

Best,
OO

DusX

If you open a support ticket, I will be happy to look at your file (you can share it and the media to me via dropbox or similar)
I will then be able to give you any recommendations I have. Without seeing the project/structure at this point its difficult to break down the issue/s any further than has already been done here.

You can create the support ticket here: https://support.troikatronix.c...

JJHP3

FWIW, I've run complex mapping (well, complex to me) off older MBP's than the OP's. Something is amiss - probably from being new to the program. With a projector what you see is what you get. Size is relative.

John

Skulpture

@nana123 said:

ฉันต้องการคำแนะนำสำหรับการนี้ผมอยากจะทราบข้อมูลเพิ่มเติม
"I need advice for this, I would like to know more. - added google translation by admin (skulpture)

Hi Nana123.

I have had to google translate your question or else most of the people here will not be able to read it. I'm sorry that we do not support Thai(?) language natively here.

Michel

@Skulpture

I deleted several different accounts that posted in Thai, even though the content does not explicitly seem to be spam, it is very suspicious that including today and yesterday there where about 6 different new users posting in Thai.

Best Michel

Maximortal

@Michel new trends in phishing? ;-)