LED perimeter boards, explained How the wall round the pitch works.
Guides to LED perimeter boards from the people who run them: 6 football grounds every season, and events on the road from La Baule to Falsterbo this year. What a board is and how a sponsor's file reaches it, how big to make the artwork, what the leagues allow on it, and the words everyone around it uses.
The guides.
In the order they are easiest to read, from the board itself to the words around it.
- What an LED perimeter board isThe whole chain with the equipment named: the sponsor’s file, the playout PC, the LED processor, the receiving card in each cabinet, and what happens when a piece of it fails.
- How big to make the artworkWhy a board is measured in pixels, how a strip round the pitch is folded into a video signal, and the file formats and frame rates that play cleanly.
- The rules leagues setThe Bundesliga’s rules on speed, flashing, white and the penalty freeze, next to the volleyball league’s and UEFA’s, with every speed limit in pixels per frame.
- The artwork template generatorA free tool: the exact pixel size of a sponsor’s stretch, a template at that size, a numbered map of the wall and a spec for the email.
- The glossaryForty-eight words defined plainly, from cabinet and receiving card to genlock, the fold and sponsor minutes.
Why we wrote these.
Most of what is published about LED perimeter boards comes from the companies that make the panels, and it stops at the panel. The questions a club or a sponsor agency actually asks start after that: why the artwork came out squashed, why a scroll judders on television, what the league will object to.
We write the software that plays the boards at the grounds we work with and at events every season, so these guides are written from the control room. Where something is a rule, the guide names the document it comes from.
A question these do not answer?
Ask us. If it is a good one, it becomes the next guide.