Projector Problem

[Barry Beckham]

I received this question today via email.

Last night we had our club AV competition. Three of us showed PTE sequences and in all three the animation was faulty when shown through the digital projector. The panning was really jerky and not smooth. The strange thing is that on our laptops and PCs it is smooth and normal. Other sequences made with Proshowgold and other software did not show the same effect.

I also notice this problem when I do demos and now I come to think about it, I don't know why I havn't raised this issue myself. I use a fairly powerful desktop (not a laptop) for my demos and my animations run perfectly on screen but not through my Mitsubishi or Epson projector.

Any ideas why this should happen and what, if any, is the solution

[Ken Cox]

Barry do you have a svhs output to tv that you could try as a test -- i would not bother running an audio feed for the test

ken

[fh1805]

From the symptoms as described I would be suspecting that the PC driving the club projector isn't up to the demands of the complex animations of PTEv5.

As we all know so well from other posts on the forum, it is usually the graphics card that is the weak link in the chain when it comes to animation. The fact that the ProShow sequences, that don't put the same stress on the GPU, all run OK is another indicator that this is likely to be the root cause area.

regards,

Peter

[thedom]

Barry,

Are the screen resolutions the same for your PC screen and your videoprojector ?

If your videoprojector resolution (1080P?) is higher than your pc screen, it could explain the problem.

And as Peter said, the weak part would be in this case the graphic card.

But why the problem wouldn't occur with ProshowGold, it is a mistery.

[davegee]

The OP doesn't say if the laptop being used to link to the projector is the same one that they run smoothly on?

I "believe" that PSG produces a file which is a video and is therefore of low resolution wheras the PTE EXE file uses the original images and applies the transitions etc. which is why PTE gives superior quality at the expense of requiring a far more powerful computer with lots of RAM and a GOOD graphics card.

Do their PTE shows run smoothly on the laptop when the projector is not connected?

DaveG

[Barry Beckham]

Ken

I can't do any tests at present, just about to leave the UK for Australia

Peter

No, it has nothing to do with PC power and I will explain why. I use the same desktop PC to record videos and make slide shows. Animation is perfect when displayed on PC screens using this PC. It is not perfect when viewed through a projector from the same PC.

Dom

I don't think that is the issue either, because the email contact I had today was using a 1024*768 club projector. The AV's were native 1024*768. Now sometimes I will increase the resolution of my PC when showing 1280*1024 shows at demos and you could be onto something. However, why are the same issues present with shows being shown by my contact which are created and displayed at 1024*768.

Dave

The answer to your question is yes, that is why this issue is so baffling.

To be honest I think the PSG thing is a red herring, there are a number of reasons why they might run OK, but god knows what. Usually it is PSG that doesn't display smooth animations even on a PC screen.

I have experienced this animation issue on two different projectors and just lived with it as I don't use animation a great deal. It is only the email received this morning that reminded me of it.

[Igor]

I use Epson TW2000 (1080UB) LCD projector at home and it shows fine PicturesToExe slideshows.

I set projector as primary monitor in display properties of Windows. Refresh rate is 60 Hz (also I tried 50 Hz with good result).

Since you set projector as main/primary display output there should be no difference - is it projector or display.

My slideshows work in fullscreen mode, hardware acceleration.

If projector works as second display (not main) and you use some software which move a window of slideshow to a second monitor (projector or display) it may cause described problem. Hardware accelerated 3D mode doesn't work enough well on secondary display.

[davegee]

Igor,

When you use this setup is your computer/laptop monitor also capable of 1920x1080 resolution?

i.e. are BOTH the projector and the monitor able to be used at the same time?

DaveG

[Guest Yachtsman1]

One thing you might check is are they downloading the shows from memory sticks or onto the desktop as normal club shows or trying to run them from the stick? I had a similar experience when I visited a local club, they downloaded my show onto the desktop along with a mixture of others including Pro Show Gold, the basic shows ran fine, the animated 5.5 shows and the PSG were rubbish. I suspect the refresh rate affected the shows.

Yachtsman1

[Igor]

Dave,

For the projector I set 1920x1080 60 Hz (primary), for LCD display set 1024x768 75 Hz (secondary).

[Davidh12]

Discovered something myself recently. When PTE crashed doing animations on my laptop outputing to projector.

The cause I discovered was I had set the power options to medium to get a bit more life from the battery. When I changed this back to best quality (forget the exact wording, not near laptop) everything was fine again.

David

[Barry Beckham]

Igor

I see what you mean and you may well have the answer, but I am unable to test that right now. As you know we are moving to Australia next weekend and I have most of my equipment ready for the international shippers.

However, I will remember that and try it in a couple of months when all my stuff catches up with me in Australia.

Thanks for the imput

[davegee]

Igor,

Your graphics card is more advanced than my (old) laptop's card.

I can only set one output resolution.

DaveG

[xahu34]

...As we all know so well from other posts on the forum, it is usually the graphics card that is the weak link in the chain when it comes to animation...

Peter,

It may be true in many cases that the graphics card is the weak link in the chain, but not always. As I reported earlier, when using the projector Canon Realis SX50, that long pans which run perfectly on a standard monitor, show synchronization effects on this particular projector. These effects show a rather non-deterministic behavior, maybe they depend on the internal states of memories or buffers. This is true for shows programmed with PTE as well as with m.objects. What I heard is that these shows do not always achieve a constant frame rate, and it seems to me that different projectors show different reactions, while monitors (in most cases) seem to behave well. Another observation was that the bad effects happened with a PC with an Nvidia 8500 GT, as well as with a PC for gamers with 2 linked Nvidia 9800 cards.

Best regards,

Xaver

Munich