GRL and Eyebeam have posted a new instructable on portable projection, with advice on projector output, projection surfaces, car and battery selection, and how not best to overload your inverter, causing it to shoot flame inside your rental van.
Outdoor digital projection in urban environments is a great method for getting your content up big before the eyes and in the minds of your fellow city inhabitants. This tutorial comes out of trial and error and it works. But please be careful. Helpful comments on safety and alternative methods are encouraged. The majority of this tutorial is aimed toward using a 2500 lumen projector (or smaller)
Along with plenty of plenty of practical advice, they’ve included links to Mac and PC versions of the Graffiti Research Lab media player. This is a simple, open source app which loads full screen, plays quicktime movies and allows repositioning and 3 axis rotation of the output through simple keyboard and mouse controls.
When you launch the .exe file it will display the movie in the folder full screen, starting with the first clip in alphabetical order. Other .mov clips in the same directory can be loaded in with the number keys. Once the clips are on screen you can scale, move, and rotate it to best fit the surface you are projecting on. Making these alterations in the software is much easier than constantly having to move the car and projector around. Click and drag the mouse on the screen to move the .mov clip. Keyboard controls are as follows:
‘z’ – mouse controls rotation
‘x’ – mouse controls position
‘c’ – mouse controls scale‘a’ – set rotation axis to the Y axis
‘s’ – set rotation axis to the X axis
‘d’ – set rotation axis to the Z axis‘r’ – resets rotation, position, and scale to 0
‘1’-‘9’ – loads in up to ni9e .mov clips from the applications directory in alphabetical order.
If nothing else this software can save you the $29.99 cost of buying Quicktime Pro just to play your .mov files full screen.
Definitely a useful tool for a guerrilla visualist’s arsenal. Compiled and source code downloads for Mac and PC available here.