How does edge blending work

To try and accomplish this, the projectors are carefully arranged so that the right-hand edge of the left-hand projector sits perfectly next to the left-hand edge of the right-hand projector. Unfortunately, achieving a seamless image using this technique is near impossible. In principle it sounds easy, but in practice it is very hard to do. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, different projectors have different characteristics, even if you are using the same brand and model.

For example, an image may drift as they warm up and the brightness and colors will also differ slightly even if the same projector brand and model are used. Secondly, it is a difficult task to manually adjust a projector to exactly the right position so that they match up at the edges. Some areas will overlap whilst others will have a gap.

This results in a tiled appearance, rather than a seamless one as shown in Figure 2. The answer lies with the use of image blending. When image blending, we overlap projectors to create what is referred to as an overlap region. For a detailed description about overlapping regions, please read our explanation here.

In this overlapping region the same proportion of the image is projected from both projectors to provide a duplicate image region. This means we can no longer simply cut the projected image into exact parts to match the exact resolution of the total number of pixels used in all projectors, but we now have to compensate for overlapping regions. Figure 3 shows an image with overlapping regions which are overlapped in the final projection. A larger overlapping region provides better control of the overall image, but this has to be balanced against the reduction in image size and the loss of overall number of pixel used in the display.

The most common thing that I think that AV companies try to do to get this look, but while doing it on the cheap, is they take this 30 foot by foot screen. And normally if you think about it, you might, to get the coverage that you need. You might take two projectors and cover half the screen with one projector and the other half with the other projector, right? And then again, we might double these up and do the double-stack projector on here.

So that way, again, you get the backup and double redundancy, all that sort of stuff. But instead of just putting each projector perfectly side-by-side and aligning them perfectly with each other. It balances out. Take a little bit of softening between them. You overlap them and you get one whole image on there.

And so when we do these three by one screen if you ever see your AV company trying to pitch you for one projector or two projectors stacked on top of each other to do these 30 foot by foot screens, run in the opposite direction.

That is not the way to do it. Please help yourself and help me by not ever allowing that to happen. So, and again, this gets really, really technical when it comes to video stuff. Again, if you do maybe a 60 foot, you might have four projectors.

If you do a 40 foot, it might be three projectors side by side. And then I always recommend double stack those projectors. So things to just kind of keep in mind when it comes to these ultra-wide screens that are super duper popular right now.

You want to make sure that you have a very, very good, video engineer. They understand the projectors, they understand the models, they understand how to tweak it. So having a good projectionist will make this look fantastic for you. There are a few basics when it comes to projection blending. I hope this was really helpful for you for if you are looking to do one of these ultra-wide screens, you understand a little bit about the blending, how many projectors you need, everything like that.

If you are doing a big corporate show, making sure you have redundancy and backup up there as well. You might start to see this diminishing law of return. Man, crazy Wednesday today, so much tech coming right at you. I hope you found this helpful. I love to hear it down below. If you enjoyed, make sure to like subscribe, do all the things.

We have so many Whiteboard Wednesdays now. And this has been Will Curran, Whiteboard Wednesday. Information junkie, energetic, and work-a-holic are just some of the words we can use to describe Will Curran. Aside from spending 20 out of 24 hours a day working as the Chief Event Einstein of Endless Events, you can catch Will ordering a chai latte or watching The Flash with his cats. Much like when you paint a wall, you always overlap your strokes to get as even a coverage as possible.

Essentially, this is what edge blending will accomplish. So, how does edge blending really work? The first is basically just overlapping two images. Essentially you send the same portion of your image across two projectors. In order to blend it together, you need to reduce the brightness in addition to matching the image. We have talked at length about environmental projection here on the blog. Not necessarily.

Typically with EP you are looking for natural intersections in your environment to align projectors to in order to avoid these hard edges.