Normal 'fit or fill' behavior with video or still layers?

1

I think I have my answer, but it appears that if I want to emulate the standard ‘fit / fill’ modes from most software (fill, fit best, fit outside etc) I would need to create that in a layer, with the math?

I was about to ask when I found the advanced video layer type, which is obviously quite complex as it covers quite a few cases. Is there a better way for beginners to just stick video on a screen, or do I need to get into complex nodes right away?

Bruce

2

Hi @bwheaton ,

We are on ISE this week, so our replies are coming a bit slower than usual. Apologies. Furthermore, our product specialist @Sara_Aleksieska has some trouble logging in, so I’m pasting her reply below:

  1. Set Texture node will fill the whole Canvas (or Video Screen), while Render Texture node will keep the original resolution (and thus aespect ratio) of the incoming texture and place it to the Canvas (or Video Screen).

    For other ‘fill/fit’ variations, you can combine a few different nodes to get the desired result.
    If you need any assistance in doing so, please let us know.

  2. Regarding your other question, in the Timeline right-click menu, under the Basic content sub-menu, you should be able to find a Video layer, which has a much simpler layout compared to the Advanced Video Layer.

    This Layer has been designed to render your chosen Video directly to a Canvas. From here, to get this video on a Video Screen in the Viewport, you can either:

  3. Map the Canvas to the Video Screen, or

  4. Swap the Render Texture node for Canvas to a Render Texture node for Video Screen. In this workflow, we completely exclude the use of any Canvases.

I hope this helps.

3

I can see that there are nodes to do a lot of what is needed, but it’s a little more than I expected to start with!
And I completely understand delays in answers, thank you for answering in the forum.
So - I think a fairly normal thing for us is to have a ‘map’ to show a video in multiple places on multiple canvases, and I would appreciate some help or examples, thank you!
Ideally it would:

  • Place the video on one canvas, usually 16:9 as ‘fit best’ i.e. filling whichever dimension it can, and staying at the native A/R of the video
  • Show the video as overlay on top of other layers on other canvases at a designated position. If there’s only one canvas then having XYWH as parameters would be ideal, where the position is a rectangle - an XY of the center of the area and width and height that the video should fit to.
4

Hopefully that makes sense… imagine multiple large LED screens and a single 1920x1080 output to feed to other destinations. When a video is played, whether 720p, 1080p or some other aspect ratio, should play fullscreen on the 1080p output and in a defined place on the other LEDs, centered on a designated spot (not top left or similar)

5

Hi,

I think I understand but not completely.

image
image648×711 25.9 KB

So, let’ say that the color grid above is our ‘video’. What you would want to do is that regardless of the resolution of the video, it would always ‘fill best’ (or ‘fill proportionally’) the video screen on the left and always be positioned centrally on the video screen on the right. Did I understand correctly?

Thanks!
Mitja

6

Pretty close, yes. A couple of snippets that can be inserted into layer ‘blueprints’ would be good, and one snippet should take a video and fit it to a whole canvas, and the other snippet would probably be most versatile if it does a fit to a specified size of rectangle at a specified position in a designated canvas.
But yes I think you understand.
Here’s what I meant:

Fit Demo
Fit Demo1920×2588 136 KB

7

Just to help with the background - on a corporate show, you get handed videos and get asked to play them as close to immediately as possible. Layer templates is a great way of deciding how to present the video*, but if you need to ‘dial in’ every video based on it’s size, you lose a lot of the benefit of the template system.

  • you generally have no control over where the video came from, so size and codec and resolution is a wildcard.
8

Hi @bwheaton ,

Thanks for clearing this up and giving us some background on the topic.

You can expect us to design such a Layer Template and send it your way at the beginning of next week. Since Answerhub does not allow us to attach these types of files, you can expect us to send this Template to you via email.

If anyone else is interested in acquiring this Layer Template, please send us a message at support@lightact.com and we will be happy to share it with you.

Best,
Sara

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