 |
|
Wide
Screen Presentation Format The wide screen format can be a frustrating thing to deal with. Although plasma and other wide screen formats look slick and modern, they are a pain to deal with for several reasons. Apples to Apples: The aspect ratio it 16:9, or 16 "units" wide by 9 "units" tall. "Units" being any consistent form of measure (group of pixels, lines, inches, whatever). The 16:9 format is that of US-standard HDTV (High Definition TV). The traditional "boxy" format of most PC's, projectors and all video is that of the traditional video format of 4:3. Taking that high-school algebra we swore we'd never need and multiplying both sides of 4:3 by 3 yields a ratio of 12:9. Comparing 12:9 to 16:9 show 4 more "units" wide on the widescreen or a 33% increase in width. When adapting the 4:3 format to fit the wide screen you can see why the image gets stretched.
Oil and Water: One common mistake we see is using both traditional aspect ratio projection with wide screen plasmas on the same show using the same signal. Usually the the image on the plasmas gets stretched. Two remedies are to (1) create the content in widescreen ratio and "letterbox" the screen or (2) create two different sources of content for each format. To "letterbox" the projection screen is to mask the top and/or bottom of the screen to eliminate the unused area. Your projectionist will know what this means. Free Lunch: Here is the best way to create your next Power Point® so that your images are not stretched. now the reason it is stretched is because of the aspect ratio. if you go to "Page Setup" in your file you will see that the default page is set to "Letter" or 11 inches by 8.5 inches. Taking that ratio and using good ol' algebra we find that the ratio is about 3.9:3 or very close to 4:3. So, the letter-size page is close to video. How do you get the plasma format? Change the settings in the page set-up to 16 inches wide by 9 inches high. You won't be printing that way but the display will perfectly match the plasma. Simple! Here's where the "no free lunch" comes in. If you change the settings on an existing file, Power Point® will stretch all the graphics to the new ratio. Back to square one? Maybe. What you have to do is create a new file with the 16 inches by 9 inches ratio BEFORE you design the presentation. Need to change that existing file anyway? Then create the blank 16:9 file and do some cutting and pasting. We've started that process by creating a 16:9 template. Click here to download it. Once the presentation is complete, save it with the words "widescreen" then save another version with the words "widescreen-standard". Take the latter file and in "Page Setup" change the dimensions back to 8.5X11 inches. It will stretch the images and graphics but may come in handy if the AV tech cannot get the first one to display properly on a plasma. The file will display in the widescreen format as the plasma will stretch it out again. Some plasma models will attempt to display the widescreen-format powerpoint as if it was the regular format by letter-boxing the letterbox. The result is a super-squashed image. If that happens, go to Powerpoint's Page Setup and change the page size back to 8 inches high by 11.5 inches wide. The LCD display will look like the images are vertically stretched but the plasma will display it properly. Videos: Need to play a video on a plasma? If you have it electronically then it is easy. Simply insert it in your nifty 16:9 Power Point® file and set it to loop or whatever. Then use the extra space for logos, info, whatever. Set the video to play automatically and as soon as you go to the slide, it plays. Or loops, whatever you need it to do.
Color Format: One final word about Power Point. Ever find yourself in the middle of a presentation and that beautiful picture that you so proudly admired back at the office is now gone, replaced by a big red "X"? That's because the folks who sent you the picture (ad agency, print designer, whoever) sent it to you in the CMYK print format at probably 300 dots per inch (dpi). CMYK is the four color separation process (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black) used in printing. Your computer uses a different process based on the video mixing of RGB (Red, Green, Blue). When you are putting the presentation together the PC will interpret the CMYK in order for you to view the picture file and the presentation will work as long as the CMYK file is available for the presentation file to link to. Most of the files I've seen have some CMYK and some RGB format pictures. When the presentation is saved, PowerPoint will embed the RGB pictures and link to the CMYK pictures. The moment you email, burn to CD, or save to USB drive the presentation all the RGB format pictures are along for the ride and CMYK format pictures stay back at home. And, instead of your audience seeing that beautiful product, picture of the CEO or new company logo, it's the big red "X". Remedy? Make sure when you request a picture for your presentation that it is in RGB format. PhotoShop™, CorelPaint™ and most other graphics programs will convert CMYK to RGB with no problem. Just because it looked great back at the office is no guarantee it will work at the show site. (And berating the AV technician won't fix the problem. Trust us on that one.) Be careful because JPEG files can be either CMYK or RGB. JPEG, BMP, TIFF, etc are compression formats, not necessarily color-only formats. Another option is choose any picture, choose the "Format Picture" function, and click the "Compress Picture" button. This will reduce the size of the pcture and format it in RGB for the file. I've seen 20mb files reduced to less than 1mb because the pictures are adjusted to screen (and projector) resolution which is WAY less than print. No, the quality is not reduced as the projector displays the image at 96dpi anyway no matter what the original resolution. We hope this helps. Give us a call with any questions.
|
 |
LD Systems, L.P. HOME - PRODUCTION SERVICES - SYSTEMS INTEGRATION - CONTACT US - SITE MAP Copyright © 2008 LD Systems, L.P. All Rights Reserved. |