Tech Forum

We have an area leadership meeting at our stake center this week and they've asked us to show the PowerPoint presentation in the cultural hall. I have long thought this would someday be a need. We had talked about looking into wireless video of some sort, but now are thinking the easiest thing would be to do a screen share using something like gotomeeting. Any suggestions?

* Not sure if this is the best forum for this. I do wish there were building A/V forum here; a lot of discussions would fit best it such a forum.

Tried GoToMeeting and VNC today and it would probably work just for the slides but it failed miserably for the embedded videos.

I suspect that some video is written to the video card directly. As such, any software that embeds the hooks in the OS won't be able to intercept it.

I think long-term, a better plan is to figure out how to distribute the video from the laptop. Newer laptops have HMDI ports. It would be nice to use something that would work for other kinds of video.

Agreed. I need to get a newer laptop; maybe I'll figure something out when I do.

My current old laptop has an s-video output, and I could send that over the building video cabling, but it's flaky and also brings the VGA resolution way down to match. It works OK for video but is poor for presentations. It would be possible to take the VGA monitor output from the projector, run it over network cable using a balun, and convert back on the other end. But running cable through the audience isn't ideal for any method.

Another suggestion would be to use something like expression encoder 4 with the screen capture (which is made to capture the video) and stream it to another laptop that is hooked up to the projector.

Many Projectors will have an RCA output that you could use to daisy chain to another projector in the cultural hall.

JohnShaw wrote:Many Projectors will have an RCA output that you could use to daisy chain to another projector in the cultural hall.

It would work though he stated that using the video (480i) was too low of quality for the presentation. Plus if is like our building that would be a 200+ foot cable.

craiggsmith wrote:My current old laptop has an s-video output, and I could send that over the building video cabling, but it's flaky and also brings the VGA resolution way down to match.

He also wanted to avoid running a cable through the audience and instead use the wireless network

craiggsmith wrote:It would be possible to take the VGA monitor output from the projector, run it over network cable using a balun, and convert back on the other end. But running cable through the audience isn't ideal for any method.

thedqs wrote:Another suggestion would be to use something like expression encoder 4 with the screen capture (which is made to capture the video) and stream it to another laptop that is hooked up to the projector.

I was wondering about something like that, I'll have to try it. Is there something similar that runs on a Mac?

thedqs wrote:

JohnShaw wrote:Many Projectors will have an RCA output that you could use to daisy chain to another projector in the cultural hall.

It would work though he stated that using the video (480i) was too low of quality for the presentation. Plus if is like our building that would be a 200+ foot cable. ... He also wanted to avoid running a cable through the audience and instead use the wireless network.

None of our projectors have an RCA output, only VGA. If it had one I could use the existing cabling by changing the connections in the satellite cabinet. (I guess I could get some kind of VGA to composite converter but don't currently have one.) The video quality would be tolerable but the presentation would not be very legible due to the low resolution. The current ideal solution would be a built-in VGA cable (with appropriate balancing) from the rostrum to the cultural hall output. The best option at this point is probably streaming software run over wireless; I'd set up a separate router to avoid the LDSAccess traffic. We don't have a network port in the cultural hall.

Another option might be to use a camera focused on the presentation and displaying its output; anyone try this?

craiggsmith wrote:Another option might be to use a camera focused on the presentation and displaying its output; anyone try this?

I have but the quality I find is better just running the cable. The presentation appears washed out unless you darken the room enough but then nobody can see the presenter.