ArKaos 4K Media Servers dance on ice
- Details
The show’s lighting designer, Manuel Da Costa, has lit DSDS (Germany Seeks the Superstar) and many other leading German talent and music shows. For Dancing on Ice, Da Costa worked alongside his regular visuals designer Dennis Muhl who wanted to run the video cues via his grandMA3 console. The video and screens supplier was ETC Germany.
They approached ArKaos looking for a new server solution that could offer extremely high-quality rendering performance, and that was easy and intuitive to control from a lighting console.
They needed this for quick and precise video mapping of the large-scale LED screen covering 360sq.m and wrapping the studio which was integral to the production design, as well as hardware with genlock capabilities.
The LED screen was three different pitches - 2.8, 5.7 and 8.6, and the two main rings of LED around the studio were 6768 and 8568 x 144 pixels resolution respectively. In addition to this, four LED banners ranged between 1768 and 4160 by 728 pixels and there was a strip of LED in front of the judge’s chairs.
Eight Panasonic 31K video projectors were used to project detailed and intricate images onto the ice, effectively using it as another screen.
On top of all that, there were 44 universes of LED tape that needed to be mapped - via the network - into Manuel’s grandMA2 lighting console.
Dennis had it in mind to use the ArKaos 4K servers following an encounter at the ISE expo in 2018 with Olli Winkler from LMP, ArKaos’ German distributor.
After the exhibition, Dennis and his colleagues attended one of ArKaos’s regular free training programmes to get more in-depth with the Belgian brand’s popular MediaMaster software and its intuitive VideoMapper.
Dennis saw this as an ideal opportunity to check out MediaMaster software with DOI in mind, after which he ordered a demo version to test it further.
Olli and Dennis met Manuel Da Costa at the latter’s MDC company HQ, where they discussed the overall production design that Manuel had in mind and how the ArKaos system would help facilitate the specific aesthetics.
The next meeting involved ArKaos’ operations manager Benjamin Bauwens plus Volker Suhre from Erkrath based ETC Germany, the show’s video supplier.
After this, ETC Germany placed the order for the eight servers - plus a spare - so Dennis and Manuel could have the powerful, flexible and dynamic video control they required.
The hardware was delivered directly to MMC’s studios where the servers were installed by Dennis, plus Olli Winkler who also supported the first setup and was on hand for Dennis and MDC’s server farmer Viola Weinert during programming.
The series’ video content was created by Gravity Germany, and the show was broadcast on Sat 1.
The 2019 Dancing on Ice series was hosted by Daniel Boschmann and Marlene Lufen and was very well received by the public. The competition was won by Sarah Lombardi and her professional partner Joti Polizoakis.
(Jim Evans)
