028 REPORT
convergence became a practical reality, with the LD designing and controlling the entire look of a set. This is also the point where video screens shed their ‘just for iMag’ constraints, moved from the PA wings to become scenic stage elements, and increasingly use animated graphical content to work with the movement, mood and colour of the lighting. Media servers from Catalyst and Green Hippo started to be an extension of the lighting control domain.
Low resolution video screens and media servers began to appear in the inven- tories of lighting companies, and the advent of semi-transparent screens, which allow lights to be placed behind and projected through them, helped to create new dynamic effects to add to that of the ever more powerful and sophisticated moving lights.
There are now two distinct areas of LED video screen operation, ‘creative’ for effect, and ‘broadcast’, where the screens are usually driven by a video director operating a vision desk fed by multiple cameras and pre-recorded video content. This requires a highly specialist skill set and technical knowledge, which will, for the foreseeable future, remain in the realm of the traditional video companies. Creative video screen operation is much less demanding, using more familiar signals and computer protocols to drive graphical content and colours to LED screen surfaces,
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which can now be controlled by DMX and treated like any other light source. The last point is key to the next evolutionary stage in the creative use of LED video screens, which is where LED lighting joins the party.
LED technology is now established as the most important area of development in all types of professional lighting, with a fixture to replace many of the traditional lamp based ones and with many variations. Fixtures like the MAC 350 profile punches out 8,000 lumens with a ‘lamp’ life of 25,000 hours. It is only a matter of time before LEDs will be up there with 1500W discharge lamps, on brightness. There have been huge advances in output and much innovation in creating lights with new and interesting effects, which leaves one of LEDs inherent properties somewhat unnoticed. The main contributor to power saving comes from the fact that during operation, the LEDs in a fixture are actually off and drawing no current when not being used, as opposed to a lamp having to be on all the time. Along with this comes the ability to be on, or off, very very quickly - just like the LEDs in a video screen.
This means that LED lights can now be addressed in the same way you would a video screen where each pixel or tile is sent a corresponding pixel of video data from a media server, and displays video. Lights are of course much bigger than an LED
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