Panoramic Player

Digital Antics‘ Panoramic Player was originally developed for use on one very special theatre show - Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘The Woman in White’ which opened in London’s West End in September 2004 and then New York’s Broadway in November 2005.

The software was specified and developed by Digital Antics’ Managing Director Quintin Willison to the functional requirements brief given by Dick Straker and Sven Ortel of scenic and video projection specialists Mesmer.

Malcolm Mellows, XL Video’s theatre specialist, provided all hardware for the installations of the Panoramic Player to Digital Antics’ specifications and, in turn, the software was licensed to XL Video for use on this and other theatre productions.

The Panoramic Player offers advanced features for the lineup of multiple channels of projectors on to a seamless curved canvas (including moving canvases):

  • Soft edge blend settings including gamma control.
  • Geometric set piece auto-generation.
  • Advanced 3D camera controls.
  • Fine controls including X,Y,Z and angular corner pinning.
  • Joystick programming control for lineup.

Many of the features of the Panoramic Player have been developed specifically to cater for the requirements of a theatre environment:

  • Highly Event driven.
  • Multi-layered, simultaneous command list based programming.
  • Accessible and informative systems monitoring showing the status of all players, projectors and other devices to the operator at all times.
  • High level show cue based operations interface.
  • Projector control (for shutter open / close and system startup / shutdown).
  • Auto ramp in and ramp out on motion.
  • Curtain and mask effects - including soft edges.

In addition, other innovations have been implemented in to the solution since the original London show, including:

  • Scenic automation link currently supporting data streams from systems from both Hudson Automation (New York) and Stage Technologies (London).
  • DVI graphics input - allowing another computer to feed pixel perfect in to the system and be split across multiple outputs. Managing over twenty frames per second at XGA (1024 wide by 768 high). Ideal for PowerPoint or Flash presentations input.

To see the Panoramic Player in action please refer to the Woman in White, ABTT and Accenture Presentation Suite job pages

To discuss using the Panoramic Player in your own installation please contact us.