Hire companies quote an LED wall by panel count and pitch. This calculator turns those two figures into the numbers a technical director needs before the site visit: how big the wall is, what resolution it gives, how many processor ports it takes, what it weighs and what it draws.
When to use it
Use it when you are comparing pitches for a stage backdrop or IMAG screen, checking whether a wall will take a 1920 x 1080 feed at one-to-one, or working out how many sockets and how much rigging weight to ask the venue about. It is also a quick check on a supplier's quote, because panel count, port count and power should all follow from the layout.
The viewing distance figure helps with the usual argument about pitch. A finer pitch costs more per square metre, so it is worth knowing how close the front row will sit before you pay for it.
Power and weight defaults are placeholders. Take the real figures from the panel spec sheet, type them in, and the current per phase updates to match. Pixels per port also changes between processors, so ask the processor's maker or your supplier for the figure at your bit depth and frame rate.
If cameras will shoot the wall, read the short note under the results, then test with the actual camera and lens on site.
How it works
Panel resolution is the panel size divided by the pixel pitch, rounded to whole pixels. You can overwrite it with the spec sheet figure. Wall width and height are columns and rows multiplied by panel size. Total resolution is columns and rows multiplied by the panel resolution.
The aspect ratio is total width divided by total height, with the nearest common ratio. The canvas check compares the wall's pixel size with 1920 x 1080 and 3840 x 2160. One-to-one mapping means one source pixel drives one LED pixel.
Processor ports are total pixels divided by pixels per port, rounded up. The 650,000 default is a planning figure, not a standard. It varies with processor, bit depth and frame rate, and the count ignores how panels are cabled to each port.
Weight is panel count multiplied by kilograms per panel. The defaults are 7.5 kg for 500 x 500 mm and 14 kg for 500 x 1000 mm, with other sizes scaled at 30 kg per square metre. Power is wall area multiplied by watts per square metre. Current is watts divided by 230 V for single phase, and a third of that per phase on a balanced three-phase supply, taking power factor as 1.
The viewing distance is a supplier rule of thumb of about 1 m per mm of pitch. It has no single published source. For the eye alone, the usual acuity figure is one arcminute, described under visual acuity, which gives a larger distance.
Rather we did the paperwork?
Send the client brief and floorplan to Production Office and get back the kit list, signal flow, crew plan and schedule, checked by a broadcast engineer, with nothing of ours on it.