LED perimeter board resolution Size it in pixels, not metres.
Artwork for an LED perimeter board should be made at the board’s exact pixel size: the pixel height of the board, and the pixel width of the stretch the sponsor bought. Ask the club for those two numbers. On cabinets of 192 x 144 pixels, a sponsor who buys six cabinets needs artwork 1152 x 144. Made at that size it plays pixel for pixel; made at any other size it gets scaled, cropped or stretched on the way to the wall.
Why the board is measured in pixels.
The LED processor, the box that feeds the cabinets, does not scale. It takes the pixels it is given and sends each one to one LED, so every decision about size has to be made before the picture reaches it. The playout software makes those decisions, and artwork at the board’s own pixel size is the only kind it does not have to change.
Metres turn into pixels through the pixel pitch, the distance between two LEDs. A board at 10 mm pitch has 100 pixels a metre, so a 6 m stretch is 600 pixels wide. Two boards the same length at different pitches need different artwork, which is why a size in centimetres is never enough.
The fold.
A perimeter is one long strip round the pitch, far wider than any video signal. The software lays that strip into a standard video frame a row at a time, left to right, and the processor puts each cabinet back in its place on the ground. The pink banner below is one piece of artwork on the pitch; on the signal it starts at the end of one row and carries on at the start of the next.
What the fold means for a designer.
Design the banner as one continuous strip, at the height of the board and the full width of the stretch it covers. Never cut it into rows yourself: the software cuts it at the seams, and a banner that crosses a seam arrives on the wall in one piece.
The number of cabinets in a row is the width of the video frame divided by the width of a cabinet, rounded down. The number of rows is the number of cabinets divided by that, rounded up. When the cabinets do not fill the last row, it runs from the left and the rest of it stays black.
Some walls are not a single height or a single cabinet size. Rows of different widths, black bands above or below the picture in each row, and cabinets of more than one size can all be set up in the software; the rule for artwork stays the same. Ask for the height and width of your stretch in pixels.
The template generator works this out for a wall and a sponsor’s stretch, and makes the template to send with the artwork request.
Real walls, folded.
Walls we ran at events in 2026, all built from P6 cabinets, with the frame each one folded into.
| Event | Cabinets | Rows of 20 | Video frame |
|---|---|---|---|
| Falsterbo Horse Show | 229 | 12, the last one part-filled | 3840 x 1728 |
| Jumping International de La Baule | 190 | 10, the last one part-filled | 3840 x 1440 |
| Belgian Championship for Young Horses | 166 | 9, the last one part-filled | 3840 x 1296 |
| Future Champions, Hagen | 164 | 9, the last one part-filled | 3840 x 1296 |
| FEI WBFSH Jumping World Breeding Championship, Lanaken | 160 | 8, every one full | 3840 x 1152 |
| 77. Oldenburger Landesturnier, Rastede | 135 | 7, the last one part-filled | 3840 x 1008 |
| Brussels Stephex Masters, perimeter | 96 | 5, the last one part-filled | 3840 x 720 |
| Longines EEF Series Final, Avenches | 64 | 4, the last one part-filled | 3840 x 576 |
When the artwork is the wrong shape.
Artwork that arrives at another size still plays, and the operator chooses what happens to it. Fit scales it to the height of the board and keeps its proportions, then pads or trims the width; the height is never cut. Fill covers the whole stretch and crops what spills over. Stretch forces it to the size of the stretch and distorts it, and is only offered for still images.
The width follows from the height. A file 1000 x 72 placed on a 144-pixel board becomes 2000 pixels wide, because it is scaled up to fill the height. So the height is the number to get right: at the board’s height the width lands where the designer put it.
The software can span a banner over part of a cabinet, in quarter-cabinet steps. On 192-pixel cabinets, 4.25 cabinets is a banner 816 pixels wide.
File formats.
| File | What to send | What happens to it |
|---|---|---|
| Still images | PNG or JPG at the board’s pixel size. WebP, GIF and BMP are accepted too. | Played as they are, pixel for pixel when the size is right. |
| Video | MP4 in H.264 at the wall’s frame rate is the safe choice. MOV, AVI and WebM are accepted. | Converted on import to H.264 4:2:0 at a fixed frame rate for smooth playout, and the original is kept. H.265, ProRes, VP9, variable frame rates and 10-bit files are all converted the same way. |
| Transparency | Put the artwork on the background you want to see. | An LED board has nothing behind it to show through. Transparent areas of a still play as black, and video carries no transparency at all. |
| Very wide video | Keep video under 16,384 pixels wide where you can. | Anything wider is played from the original file, without the conversion. |
Frame rate.
Make video at the frame rate the wall runs at, and ask the club which that is. In Europe it is usually 50, or 25, which plays cleanly on a 50 Hz wall because each frame is simply shown twice. Footage made at 30 or 60 has to lose or repeat frames on a 50 Hz wall, and on a slow scroll or pan that shows as judder.
The playout software matches its output to the refresh rate the LED processor reports. Many processors describe 50 Hz as a little under 50, which Windows reports as 49; USM treats that as 50. When the two do not match, video plays at the wrong speed: a 50-frame channel on a 60 Hz display runs 20% fast.
How long each advert runs.
Length is a contract question more than a design one: each sponsor buys a number of seconds on the wall, and the rotation gives them exactly that. In the Bundesliga no advert may run shorter than 15 seconds, and the Volleyball Bundesliga recommends 30. The rules leagues set on length, speed and flashing.
Questions.
- What resolution should artwork for an LED perimeter board be?
- The board’s own pixel size: its height in pixels, and the width in pixels of the stretch the sponsor bought. The club or its LED supplier has both numbers. On cabinets of 192 x 144 pixels, six cabinets is 1152 x 144.
- Can I supply LED board artwork in centimetres?
- Only if you also know the pixel pitch, which turns centimetres into pixels. A 10 mm pitch has one pixel per centimetre. Asking for the size in pixels avoids the conversion altogether.
- Why does my banner look squashed on the LED board?
- It was made at a different shape from the stretch it plays on, and it was set to Stretch. Supplied at the board’s pixel height and the stretch’s pixel width, it plays unchanged.
- Do LED perimeter boards support transparency?
- No. A board has nothing behind it to show through, so transparent areas of an image play as black. Put the artwork on the background you want to see.
- What frame rate should video for LED boards be?
- The frame rate the wall runs at, which in Europe is usually 50. Video at 25 also plays cleanly on a 50 Hz wall.
- Why is the video signal for a perimeter a different shape from the board?
- Because the board is far wider than any video frame. The software folds the strip into rows of a standard frame and the LED processor maps each cabinet back to its place. The fold, in the glossary.
A file that will not sit right?
Send it to us with the pixel size of the stretch it was made for, and the name of the ground.