[Frameworks] 2 Video Installation Questions

[Dave Tetzlaff]

> So do we use a very small dvd player or is there a way to play a looping digital file through a projector?

Your best bet is probably a mini 'digital media player', e.g.:
http://tinyurl.com/hf6a62b
http://tinyurl.com/zh7r7nw

There are various similar models on Amazon and eBay, between $25 and $45. They're like 3" square with and HDMI output and play files off an SD card or USB drive. They play files of a variety of codecs and containers, but mainly H264 variants, which will look very good at an efficient size if you encode it right (e.g. with proper setting in x264). That is, once you get to a certain obtainable level of quality with the video file itself, it's all about the projector.

The one drawback, which would be a caution with an optical disc player as well, is that it may show a 'play' symbol or other screen display at the start of each new file, with no way to repress that in the menu. If the projected piece isn't super-long, I'd get a big USB thumb drive or SD card and make a playback file with as many iterations as possible of the piece one after the other with proper interval. That way you'd get many 'loops' before the player actually repeats the file, perhaps bringing that display stuff up for a moment…

I think there may be either media players or Blu-Ray players that let you turn off that display info, so they can go right to the beginning of the next file (or repeat) without putting anything on screen. Alas, I don't know which, and that's usually not the kind of info the put on the product pages. Sometimes the vendors/importers/mfrs have instruction manuals you can DL online, which might answer the question.