LED 101 / Basics
Filming and livestreaming LED walls
Phones in the stands and broadcast cameras punish low refresh and bad scan behaviour. Spec the wall for how it will be filmed, not only how it looks to the eye.
A wall can look fine from the bleachers and still band, strobe, or roll on a phone or broadcast camera. Gyms, arenas, and outdoor events are filmed constantly. If livestreams and highlight reels matter, put camera behaviour on the spec sheet.
Refresh rate on the LED side is the first lever. Sports and filmed rooms often want thousands of hertz so shutters and CMOS rolling shutters do not paint dark bars across the image. See Refresh rate. Scan rate and driver behaviour also matter; ask the maker what camera shutter speeds they tested.
Colour depth and processing help gradients and skin tones on camera, but they do not fix a low refresh wall. Brightness that is too high for the room can bloom on camera even when the eye adapts. Auto brightness outdoors helps the audience and the lens.
Content timing matters too. Scoreboard graphics with thin one-pixel lines flicker more on camera than solid blocks. Keep critical text thicker when you know phones will record the game.
On commissioning, record a few clips with the same phones and cameras the school or venue actually uses. Fix problems before opening night, not after the first viral clip shows banding.