Making compositions for a video wall (10 displays)

[jokew]

We're creating a video wall with 10 displays. I know I need a video per display, so I need to setup a composition per display. How do I position these compositions into one big composition? The largest display is 55 inch. How do I need to scale everything so it matches our setup?

This is the setup:

• 3x HP Z24q = 24 inch = 2560 x 1440
• 4x HP 27k = 27 inch = 3840 x 2160
• 2x HP 32k = 32 inch = 3840 x 2160
• 1x Samsung QB55B = 55 inch = 3840 x 2160

Thank you!

[Kyle Hamrick]

Each screen will be a separate file at delivery? I'd confirm this with your contacts - it's sometimes done where they actually take one large single file with each piece mapped to specific locations (which they should help you establish).

If they're all separate, when I've had similar projects in the past, this is how I've approached it:
- Create each screen comp with the necessary settings for that particular output. 
- Make yourself a single "master viewing" comp that lays everything out in the correct positions (or close enough) - but this can all be 50% or even 25% of the actual size. Since this is for your own reference (and probably client review), I'd aim for making this one a size/format that can easily be exported without weird custom settings. 

[jokew]

Each display will have it's own player so they need separate video files (this is confirmed).

As the 55 inch (display number 1) has the same resolution as the 2 displays (4 and 5) underneath, I was wondering how to position them? As these are also 4K ... My setup is drawn based on the size in cm of the displays themselves. But if I place these 3 as a composition there all the same size. While in real life the 55 inch is twice as wide (as you can see in the setup).

[Kyle Hamrick]

If it were me, I'd just bring that sketch into Ae and manually Scale/Position each comp to match. That should be more than close enough for reference/approval. 

If it needs to be absolutely pixel perfect, then I guess it's time to get out the calculator. 

[jokew]

Okay, and any tips on how to stretch 1 image over all 10 displays? So each display holds a piece of the image.

[Mylenium]

Slice whatever large images you have up in manageable chunks in Photoshop and place them accordingly in the individual comps. Otherwise AE will simply go bybye with a ton of memory errors and you'll never finish this. Same for any other assets you may use. Even in this day and age AE can't basically properly deal with anything that exceeds 8k and either GPU acceleration or memory management at large go belly up. as suggested, writing down values and a calculator are your friend to figure out the exact values where each comp's area needs to start and end.

Mylenium

[Kyle Hamrick]

I agree w/ Myllenium that unless you have a super-beefy system, you're likely going to run into some processing slowdowns if your content is heavy at all. (Pre-rendering will be your friend here.) That said, it looks like your actual working space is only about 6800x4400, so you might be ok. 

I'm assuming by "image" you actually mean "video" or "motion content," so imagine that the "slicing it up in Photoshop"  suggestion may not be an option here.

I'd start by making this layout comp like I suggested above. For content that needs to stretch across multiple screens, you can then kind of reverse-engineer that to position that layout map into each individual screen. If this is intended to be one large cohesive image, that'll likely be easier to work with anyway. Make yourself some grids, create shape layers with bright red edges, give yourself clear labels, etc., so you can clearly see where everything lines up, even when you're positioning those things within precomps. There's a certain amount of manual setup involved in a bespoke multiscreen layout like this.

If at all possible, I'd recommend doing some tests with easy dummy layers on the actual hardware setup before you spend 100 hours making your time-consuming content all perfect. Failing that, try to build things in a way that you'll be able to nudge things around later WITHOUT having to rebuild stuff from scratch.