Short answer: LED wall content is built at the screen's own pixel size, not on an off-the-shelf 1920x1080 template. To find that size, multiply the number of cabinets by the pixels each cabinet carries. The standard rental cabinet in the event business is 500x500 mm, and product data for Planar LN series indoor cabinets gives 256x256 pixels at 1.9 mm pitch, 192x192 at 2.6 mm and 128x128 at 3.9 mm. A 6 by 3 metre P3.9 wall is therefore 12 by 6 cabinets, 1536x768 pixels, with a 2:1 aspect ratio. Build the same wall in P2.6 and the canvas becomes 2304x1152. That is the size you design at and the size you render at. What follows: the cabinet maths, how big the type has to be, which codec to deliver, how many data ports a wall needs, and what changes once cameras are in the room.
How do you work out a screen's real resolution?
The calculation is one line: divide 1000 mm by the pixel pitch to get pixels per metre. At P3.9 that is 1000 divided by 3.91, roughly 256 pixels. At P2.6 it is 1000 divided by 2.604, roughly 384. This also answers a question people ask about rental panels: why the pitch is 3.906 rather than 3.9, and 2.604 rather than 2.6. Those values were chosen so that exactly 128 or 192 pixels fit across a 500 mm cabinet. Manufacturer data backs it up, with Planar LN series 500x500 mm indoor cabinets listed at 256x256 pixels for 1.9 mm, 192x192 for 2.6 mm and 128x128 for 3.9 mm. So the first question on site is not how many metres but how many cabinets. An 8 by 4.5 metre P2.6 wall is 16 by 9 cabinets, 3072x1728 pixels, a clean 16:9. Build it in P3.9 and you get 2048x1152. The stakes keep rising as screens get bigger: AVIXA's 2025 Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis puts pro AV revenue at 332 billion dollars in 2025 and forecasts 402 billion by 2030.
Why a 1920x1080 template does not work
Two separate problems. First, the ratio. A 6 by 3 metre wall is 2:1, not 16:9. Drop a 1920x1080 file onto that canvas and either the image stretches horizontally and faces distort, or it gets cropped top and bottom and the logo in the lower band disappears. Second, sharpness. Feed a 2304x1152 wall from a laptop running 1080p and the processor has to scale the image up. You paid for a 2.6 mm pitch and you give it back in soft type edges. The right method is to open the design at the screen's own pixel size. If the wall is 1536x768, the canvas is 1536x768. If the media server cannot take that size in one piece, the content gets sliced vertically, but that decision belongs in the design phase, not in the rehearsal morning. Do not treat side screens as a continuation of the main wall either. In most rigs they are fed as separate layers with their own resolutions.
How large does the text on screen need to be?
Work in centimetres first, then convert to pixels. The signage rule of thumb most designers use asks for about 2.5 cm of capital letter height per 3 m of viewing distance. Sources differ, and some give looser ratios, so treat it as a floor rather than a ceiling. If the back row sits 25 m away, cap height lands around 20 cm. Divide that by the pitch to get pixels: 200 divided by 3.91 is roughly 51 pixels on a P3.9 wall, and roughly 77 pixels on P2.6. On a 1536x768 canvas, 51 pixels is about 7 percent of screen height. The 18 point bullet points in a slide template do not clear that bar. Two more warnings. In light-weight fonts, strokes one pixel wide vanish or flicker on LED, so choose medium and bold weights. Pitch also sets the minimum viewing distance, and the rough industry rule is to read the pitch in millimetres as metres, meaning a guest seated closer than about 4 m to a P3.9 wall will resolve individual pixels. If you want to work from a standard rather than a rule of thumb, the reference is ANSI/AVIXA V202.01:2016, Display Image Size for 2D Content in Audiovisual Systems, published in 2016.
Which file format and frame rate do you deliver?
For moving content there are two common routes. The requirements table Netflix publishes for on-set infrastructure names ProRes as the ideal codec for LED wall content, calling for at least 10 bit depth, near-lossless compression and the ability to handle UHD and above. On the media server side, once the canvas gets large, the HAP family is favoured because it decodes on the GPU, while playing a 3,000 pixel wide file as H.264 can choke the system. Deliver stills as PNG, since JPEG banding across flat brand colours and gradients is clearly visible on LED. Match the frame rate to the system output. Broadcast and camera work in Turkey and Europe runs on 25 and 50, so rendering at 25 or 50 reduces judder when cameras are in the room. Work in Rec.709 and keep full range and limited range from getting mixed up, because mixing them lifts blacks to grey. Put the screen name, resolution and version in the file name, something like main_screen_1536x768_v3.
How many data runs and what processor does it take?
Pixel count drives the cabling as well as the design. NovaStar sending card specifications put the capacity of a single Gigabit Ethernet port at 650,000 pixels at 8 bit colour depth, dropping to 325,000 pixels on the same port at 10 bit. The two ports on an MSD300-1 and the four on an MSD600-1 are rated against that limit. Worked through: a 1536x768 P3.9 wall is 1,179,648 pixels, which needs two ports at 8 bit and four at 10 bit. A 2304x1152 P2.6 wall is 2,654,208 pixels, so you move to five ports at 8 bit and nine at 10 bit. That number decides how many cables get run, how the cabinets are grouped and whether a redundant loop is built. The input side has limits too: HDMI 2.0 carries 4K at 60 frames on a single cable, and anything above that means multiple inputs, fibre or 12G-SDI. When you take quotes, ask for the pixel map and the port layout, not the square metres.
What changes when cameras are in the room?
A wall can look flawless to the eye and come out striped on camera. The cause is a mismatch between refresh rate and shutter. Manufacturers recommend a 3,840 Hz refresh threshold for work that will be filmed; panels running at 1,920 Hz can show rolling bands, and high end broadcast and virtual production work is specified at 7,680 Hz. If banding persists, two adjustments usually fix it: the camera shutter and the phase or genlock setting on the processor. The content has its own rules. Fine striped patterns, tight checkerboards and heavy grain produce moire on camera, so design them out. A full-screen white frame wrecks exposure and turns the speaker on stage into a silhouette. Brightness is normally set for the camera rather than the room, so working in mid tones beats pushing contrast to the limit. At rehearsal, shoot a slow motion clip on a phone. Ten seconds tells you whether there is banding.
Which part of the screen nobody sees
The canvas the designer sees is not the area the guest sees. The bottom metre of a floor-standing LED wall disappears behind heads once the front rows fill, and when the wall sits on stage, scenery, stage monitors and crew cut the same band. The rule is simple: anything that has to be read belongs in the top two thirds, and the lower band carries atmosphere, not information. If a presenter stands in front of the wall, the centre is gone too, so move the logo and the key message to the sides. Leave at least one cabinet width of margin around the edges, so that if the rigged size changes, what gets cropped is empty space rather than type. If the screen is not a plain rectangle, meaning arches, stepped blocks or side wings, ask the supplier for the pixel map and design to that mask. Assuming symmetry is how you end up discovering on rig night that the logo is not centred on stage.
Delivery and rehearsal: the final checklist
The first test on install day is a one-to-one mapping check. Send a test image at the wall's full resolution with a border at the edges and a pixel grid in the middle. If the grid comes up crisp, nothing is scaling. If it goes soft, something in the chain is converting. Deliver content at least two days before the event, back it up to a second drive, and prepare the last frame of each video as a still so the screen does not go black if playback drops. Rehearse on the actual wall and look from two places: the back row and the camera viewfinder. Tales Event is based in Istanbul and runs LED, audio, lighting and stage production across Turkey for launches, dealer meetings, openings, concept gala nights and graduation ceremonies, with content design produced in the same file. Send us your screen dimensions and floor plan and we will put the pixel map, the port layout and the design canvas sizes in the proposal.
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