K, Control4, & Scope Screens

[TrackZ]

I was working on my system programming last night between K, Control4, and my JVC NX7. I established better aspect ratios lens memories for 1.78, 1.85, and 2.35/2.4 content discretely to change based on playback via K when starting a movie. It works great.

I didn't have 1.85 set up before and now my 2.35/2.4 include some masking for movies like Top Gun.

My problem is I was trying to fix the UI in widescreen mode via the one video option in the web settings. Normal/auto is for 16:9 UI, but the other option allows for 2.35 fixed. I had assumed that upon going to the menu/UI, K would send a Control4 trigger to go to 2.35 mode with this setting, but it didn't appear to do so.

It would just revert back my first lens memory, which was the 1.78 mode. I'm curious if anyone keep their K UI in 2.35 and with Control4 are you able to have the right commands triggered to get into a 2.35 lens memory.

My issue could have been operator error if I overlooked something in my C4 Composer settings, but I thought I had it all correct.

 

[Kevin D]

I would think so as well. If not I know the Chow driver at least has "entered menu mode" as an option to program off of.

Kevin D.

 

[baltz]

I'm not sure if you get aspect info when in the main menu. If not, you can use the menu location to trigger it. I forget what it's called, but it has 4 possible locations (menu, movie, credits, intermission). When it enters the menu location, you can trigger your 2.35 lens memory.

You'll also want to make sure that you set the player's aspect ratio to "CinemaScape Native 2.35 Display". This makes sure to render the OSD in 2.35 with black bars so that you can use your 2.35 lens memory.

 

[MikeKobb]

The player should be emitting a 2.35 trigger event when you have it set to a mode that outputs the OSD in 2.35. Possible that a bug has crept in somewhere, either in kOS or in the Control4 driver, but your expectation is correct. Unfortunately I'm headed off on vacation for a week so I won't be able to try this out until I return.

 

[TrackZ]

The player should be emitting a 2.35 trigger event when you have it set to a mode that outputs the OSD in 2.35. Possible that a bug has crept in somewhere, either in kOS or in the Control4 driver, but your expectation is correct. Unfortunately I'm headed off on vacation for a week so I won't be able to try this out until I return.

Thanks, that's what I thought as well. The projector though kept getting triggered to make it go to the 16:9 mode which happened to be installation mode 1 in my settings. I will try to reproduce the situation again and test it (just in case it was user programming error ). If I can make it happen and you guys want to see it via a call or something, let me know. Or I can try to video it.

I can say the projector was being told to change lens modes exiting a movie and I did not have any programming in the on menu option assuming that the K would send an aspect ratio trigger based on the OSD web menu setting.

 

[MikeKobb]

I'm sorry it took so long for me to test this, but now that I'm back from vacation and getting caught up, I did finally get a little time to venture into my theater. I switched my player over to CinemaScape Letterbox mode, and verified that my screen immediately masked to 2.35/2.40. Playing a 2.40 movie, the screen stayed in 2.40 mode, and remained there when I returned to the OSD. I then played a 1.85 movie, whereupon the screen masked to 1.85. When I hit stop, the screen re-masked to 2.35 for the CinemaScape OSD.

I'm using the latest version of our Control4 drivers, as available through Composer Pro, and triggering off of the "Mask to" events. See the attached screenshot. Ignore the variable. That's for some fancy programming I'm doing that's unrelated to Kaleidescape.

 

[TrackZ]

I'm sorry it took so long for me to test this, but now that I'm back from vacation and getting caught up, I did finally get a little time to venture into my theater. I switched my player over to CinemaScape Letterbox mode, and verified that my screen immediately masked to 2.35/2.40. Playing a 2.40 movie, the screen stayed in 2.40 mode, and remained there when I returned to the OSD. I then played a 1.85 movie, whereupon the screen masked to 1.85. When I hit stop, the screen re-masked to 2.35 for the CinemaScape OSD.

I'm using the latest version of our Control4 drivers, as available through Composer Pro, and triggering off of the "Mask to" events. See the attached screenshot. Ignore the variable. That's for some fancy programming I'm doing that's unrelated to Kaleidescape.

View attachment 2965

Excellent. I'll revisit my programming for this in a few weeks after I'm back from my upcoming travels. I don't technically have a masking system as I'm using projector zoom modes, but I'm sure I should be to accomplish the same thing.

 

[thrillcat]

I'm sorry it took so long for me to test this, but now that I'm back from vacation and getting caught up, I did finally get a little time to venture into my theater. I switched my player over to CinemaScape Letterbox mode, and verified that my screen immediately masked to 2.35/2.40. Playing a 2.40 movie, the screen stayed in 2.40 mode, and remained there when I returned to the OSD. I then played a 1.85 movie, whereupon the screen masked to 1.85. When I hit stop, the screen re-masked to 2.35 for the CinemaScape OSD.

I'm using the latest version of our Control4 drivers, as available through Composer Pro, and triggering off of the "Mask to" events. See the attached screenshot. Ignore the variable. That's for some fancy programming I'm doing that's unrelated to Kaleidescape.

What happens if you play a movie that is 2:1, or one of the other "in-between" ratios? I do not yet have a control system, but it's on my list, and I'm curious. This would be the primary functionality I'm looking for, so I don't want to make the investment to find that pulling up a 2:1 film would bring up the 1.85 settings, or anything other than 2:1.

 

[MikeKobb]

Well, it depends on how you program things.

Right now, our masking triggers output one of a fixed number of presets: 1.33, 1.66, 1.78, 1.85, and 2.35. This was designed for screen masking systems that have fixed preset positions.

On top of the presets, they also output "trim" values for all four sides of the image, which are intended to accommodate masking systems that have infinitely-variable mask positions (e.g. Stewart Filmscreen Director's Choice). These trim values allow the masking system to precisely fit the projected image, even if the image is not in one of the traditional preset ratios, and even if the image is not centered!

So, if you just listen to the preset messages, you will be limited to the preset aspect ratios, which currently do not include 2.0 or 2.2 (or 1.90 for IMAX or 2.76 for The Hateful Eight or Ben-Hur). The system will output the closest preset ratio that is "more open" than the actual ratio, when considering the image projected on a 1.78 screen. So, for 2.0, we would output 1.85. For 2.76, we will output 2.35, etc.

If you wanted to do some control system programming (or hire a programmer), you could do some math on the combination of the preset and the trim values to compute arbitrary aspect ratios.

Having said that, we are definitely aware that there are these other ratios that aren't currently covered by the existing set of presets. I'm hoping that we'll be able to accommodate a wider set of ratios in time, but this is unfortunately a change that has very wide-ranging implications. Everything from our content-authoring tools all the way down to the players will be touched by those changes. So, that's why we haven't just bashed it out over a weekend.

 

[jmf]

Resurfacing this topic.

I took a slightly different approach to reduce the amount of times my lens motors run. I programmed to look for a “play” event, and then cycle with IF/ELSE to match the stated CinemaScope info that is pushed to C4. When I stop and go back to menu/OSD, I don’t change anything, as I don’t care about the menu format since it’s usable in any aspect ratio, and speed to menu and no motor-usage is my goal.

What I’d really like is to enhance the kscape driver to offer some better options on the conditionals. It’s very limited at the moment for mask/aspect changes.

I’d like to see conditions for

1: play-state (play, pause, stop).
2: Aspect Ratio change (change to)
3: Current aspect ratio
4: Current title name
4: variables for the above

As it stands, I don’t think you can extract aspect ratio in the device / conditions, even though I see it reported in the Lua logs.

An area of usefulness here is for variable aspect ratio movies. For example, K reports Top Gun Maverick as 1.85, which is not a great viewing experience if you have a scope screen. I manually set to 2.40, then use projector masking to block the IMAX aspect for the scenes that jump to it. This keeps the movie in 2.40, and I don’t really miss anything from the IMAX format. Those with a 16:9 obviously won’t care.


@MikeKobb I see you set a variable based on aspect, is that with the current available driver or something you have internal?

 

[MikeKobb]

I'm using the stock driver. I do it like this:



That custom-button press is what triggers my screen masking system to do its thing, which is why I have some logic to make sure that the Strato is actually the source before it does anything. I also reset the masks to 1.78 if the source changes away from the Strato.

I considered asking the driver engineers to add a variable for the current aspect ratio, but then I realized it could be done this way pretty trivially so I didn't make the request.

I'm honestly a little surprised we don't expose the title somewhere. What did you want to do with it, out of curiosity?

 

[jmf]

Ah, this makes sense, thank you!

Title request is mostly a bit of a hack. Using Top Gun Maverick as my example, it shows an aspect of 1:85, but it’s really a 2.35/2.40 for a good portion, IMAX for the other, etc. I find if I run in 2.40 and mask the top and bottom via projector masking, the experience is good. I don’t see the aspect changes, nor do I end up with images off of the screen.

I think a few other titles do this also. My thought is I could match title in C4 to set my projector mode for specific titles. Essentially override the typical mask logic for these “special” titles.

 

[jmf]

FYI - This is how I did mine. Again, the Play state is what triggers the change for me.

 

[MikeKobb]

My thought is I could match title in C4 to set my projector mode for specific titles. Essentially override the typical mask logic for these “special” titles

I guessed that might be the idea. I've considered doing something similar, TBH.

I'm not sure when the driver will next be updated, but I will file a feature request to expose the title, and I think it's certainly reasonable to expose the various properties that we send events for as variables and/or conditionals, so I'll include that as well.

 

[jmf]

I guessed that might be the idea. I've considered doing something similar, TBH.

I'm not sure when the driver will next be updated, but I will file a feature request to expose the title, and I think it's certainly reasonable to expose the various properties that we send events for as variables and/or conditionals, so I'll include that as well.

Fantastic! Thank you. I don't believe its a heavy lift for the c4 driver update to expose these, especially since it appears the driver is already seeing the information (according the the Lua debug log). I know the dev teams have a lot of other more pressing things though.

 

[MikeKobb]

I agree that I think it's probably a minor update, but at the same time, we don't have any current plans to update the driver, so it may be awhile.