[SML] Projection masking

[Davin Gaddy]

I appologize for my previous post.  As I do not post often, I did not realize that my email settings had changed away from plain text.  Digest lurker mistake.

Anyhow, this was my post.

"Agreed, video black is darker with projectors that have a higher contrast ratio.  You can gain what is essentially the same thing as a dynamic contrast by putting the projector into the "economy" mode for the lamp, which will cut down your brightness.  On the larger staging projectors, there will often be an internal iris and power setting that can help adjust for this.  But that doesn't really help any more than knowing that if you [the OP] have an LCD you will have worse contrast than with the DLP (I could bore you all with a long diatribe about the various technologies and their strengths and weaknesses) since you already have the projector.

Adding physical masking should not hurt your lens, barring physical contact which could scratch it.  I put Wybron Eclipse dousers in front of 22k projectors and have no ill effect on the lens (over several years of use).  I use them to completely block the video when not using the projectors and will partially close them to feather the video black edges when the majority of the image is masked.  So, that might be another possibility, instead of making a hard line cut with your black wrap, make a sawtooth cut.  It will make it more difficult for the audience to see that hard video black edge."