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Kinematic / Learn / Your first hour / Play a video on a wall of LED lights
Your first hour · Perform

Play a video on a wall of LED lights

Project9 minFirst steps6 stepsStarts from a new project
What you will make

A video playing on a 32 by 18 LED panel in the app's own panel view, every light the color of the picture under it, ready to wire to a real panel.

A walking fox in the video, and the same fox up close on the 32 by 18 LED panel, each light the color of the picture under it.
A walking fox in the video, and the same fox up close on the 32 by 18 LED panel, each light the color of the picture under it.

An LED panel is a grid of lights, and each light is one pixel of the picture. You can watch the panel play in the app before you own one.

Steps

  1. On the start screen, click New Project. Drag a video onto the viewport, where the card says Drop a file here. It plays in the viewport. Clips with bold shapes and strong colors read best on a panel of lights.

  2. Along the top of the viewport, open Send to, point at DMX and choose Shrink to an LED matrix. The viewport now shows the video as a grid of colored squares, one square for each light on the panel.

    Send to open on the video, with DMX pointed at and Drive DMX lights and Shrink to an LED matrix in the submenu.
    Send to open on the video, with DMX pointed at and Drive DMX lights and Shrink to an LED matrix in the submenu.

  3. On the card at the right of the view, set Width to 32 and Height to 18. That is the same shape as a widescreen video, so nothing gets squashed, and you can tell what is playing at a glance.

    The video on a 32 by 18 grid of lights, with Width and Height on the card.
    The video on a 32 by 18 grid of lights, with Width and Height on the card.

  4. Try Width 16 and Height 9 to see how a smaller panel loses the picture, then go back to 32 by 18.

  5. Set Sample on the card to nearest for hard, crisp squares, or leave it on area_average, which blends each square from every pixel under it.

  6. When a real panel arrives: one DMX universe carries 170 lights and this panel has 576, so it is wired as four 16 by 9 tiles, each on its own universe. For each tile, crop its quarter of the panel picture with Edit > Framing > Crop and size > Crop, then add a Matrix to DMX (hover over the viewport, press Shift+Space, type matrix to, press Enter) and set it to 16 by 9 on that tile's Universe. Wire each one's Dmx_Out into an ArtNetSendInterface for a network lighting gateway.

On the canvas

Dropping the file added an InputVideoFile, and Shrink to an LED matrix added a DmxImageToMatrix after it, which shrinks the picture to one pixel per light. For a real panel, each tile adds an ImageCrop and a MatrixToDmx, which lays its lights into DMX channels, three per light.

Make it yours

  • Try a clip of a dancer on a black background: bold shapes read best on lights.
  • Set Width 64 and Height 36 to see how a big LED wall would look.
  • Lower Brightness on each Matrix to DMX so the panel does not blind the front row.
  • Set Channel order on Matrix to DMX to grb if reds come out green on your panel.
Keep going
← Another oneMake a visual that pulses to your musicA field of glowing bokeh that zooms in on every loud beat of a song you choose, playing on the whole screen.
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