3 by 3 screens video wall - setup and editing workflow

[Martin Konrad]

I have a project for an exhibition where the client wants a 3 by 3 screens video wall.
There is no live or event content, everything is prerecorded.
We want the screens to sometimes display 9 individual images and sometimes one image stretched over 9 screens.

I think to make the overall 9 screen film and all screens timings editable I could use Premiere creating a 3xHD (3240x 5940px) project.

Once done with the edit is there a way to export only a portion of the project (as in the top left HD image, top, top right...) essentially having
one final film for each screen.

Next step is a video player software that supports output to 9 different screens and stays in sync for over a week (suggestions???)

I found a 9x HD Graphics card, Matrox C900 which looks like a good option but seems Windows only (I would be much more comfortable staying on Mac but its not a deal breaker)

has anyone done stuff like this and is willing to share some thoughts?

 

[jussi rovanpera]

I'd look into VJ apps for that kind of playback, and support for multiple monitors.

 

[Danai Chutinaton]

You could also treat all 9 screens as a single 3840x2160 project. Typically the viewing distance from a video wall is far enough away that you would not benefit from having a full 1920x1080 to each screen. This would allow you to deliver a single video 4K UHD clip so you won't have sync issues between screens. The video wall software/hardware will then play your clip across all 9 screens.

I did a project once where I delivered a 1080p project for a 9x9 video wall consisting of 1080p screens and it looked decent due to the viewing distance from the screens. A 4k UHD file would have looked better, but I couldn't deliver a 4k UHD file for that project because the playback hardware did not support 4k UHD.

 

[Martin Konrad]

I got a another friend suggesting VJ software, so yes I'll kook into that. The screens will be at a normal TV distance for most viewers
as its the background wall on an expo stand thats not very big in size, I think 1,5-3m for most visitors.

If VJ software is the solution I have to deal with 9x HD inside the software and 6k to 9x HD for the parts where a single image is displayed on 9 screens

so the workflow would be recording 6k - render 6k to 9 tiles of HD each and than do all composing and editing in the VJ software with HD clips