# news projection



## Dionysus (Feb 9, 2009)

I am currently working on a new show called "The Bystander Effect". The Author/Director wants us to project news footage onto a screen by the pros. SR.
However what he wants is a 'brady bunch' arrangement of 9 different footages at once in a 3x3 grid to fill the screen (with one projector available).

Does anyone know how to easily produce this effect?
I don't do a whole lot of digital video editing.

We have sent an enquiry to some local news stations to see if we can use footage from them.


----------



## museav (Feb 9, 2009)

If you try to do this with one projector you might find a security monitoring system that will handle a 3x3 mutli-image display but it will probably be lower resolution. Otherwise you would need a dedicated multi-image processor. Perhaps some others will have ideas on how to address it in the content production.

You might want to look for some public domain footage, I'm not sure what flexibility the stations will have in providing content. I expect that their releases and contracts may severely limit how they can use and distribute their footage so I'll be interested to hear how they respond.


----------



## kiwitechgirl (Feb 9, 2009)

I suspect you'll have to find someone who is familiar with digital video editing software and get them to assist you! I'm fairly sure that Final Cut Pro will let you do split-screen stuff, just not sure if it will do a 3x3 grid (my flatmate would know but he's not home so I can't ask him right now!). Editing the footage so that what's being sent to the projector is what you want to see is probably going to be the most successful way, as the hardware which will combine multiple sources into a grid tends to be security system stuff, and therefore lower quality. Plus, if it's edited down into a single source already in the format you want it, it will be much simpler in terms of playback - one DVD player instead of nine!


----------



## Dionysus (Feb 9, 2009)

My friend and I have done some digital video editing before. Just not a whole lot.
I think he may have a pirated copy of Final Cut Pro, and since he has the Adobe Suite he has Premiere.

I agree that the hardware-security method is not a very good solution, too poor quality, and we would have to feed from 9 DVD players and then record the result again, causing more loss.

It would be nice if I could find out for sure if say Final Cut could do it... Maybe with a 3rd party plugin?
Perhaps there is another solution?


----------



## icewolf08 (Feb 11, 2009)

It is simple to do this effect in FCP (and probably very similar in premier). Just drop the multiple clips each into it's own video track in the timeline. Make sure you have the wireframes turned on and as in any image editing software you will see a box with handles around the video frame in the viewer. Just drag the handles to size each video layer and then arrange them in the orientation you want by dragging. Also note that holding the SHIFT key will preserve the aspect ratio as you adjust the size.

Export to the format of your choice for playback.

The only downside to this technique is that you are seriously downscaling your video. Chances are most of your content will become illegible when you scale the images to 1/9th the native size. The 720x480 DV resolution is very low to begin with. You may be better off building something in as simple a program as PowerPoint and putting 9 individual video clips on one slide that play simultaneously. This would allow you to output at a much higher screen resolution. I am sure there is other software out there that can do this, but I don't know off the top of my head.


----------



## museav (Feb 12, 2009)

Dionysus said:


> My friend and I have done some digital video editing before. Just not a whole lot.
> I think he may have a pirated copy of Final Cut Pro, and since he has the Adobe Suite he has Premiere.


Not to be preachy and what you do on your own is up to you, but you probably want to avoid using illegal software when you are producing something for a school event.


----------



## lieperjp (Feb 12, 2009)

You could do this in PowerPoint as well, though I have doubts about its efficacy. Just insert several movies (nine, in this case) and have them all automatically start with the slide. 

Watch: 

PP 2007 (NO Internet)

May want to skip towards the end of that one. It's mostly about how to download a video from YouTube and insert it into a PowerPoint.


----------

