Production companies Kingsmark Enterprises of Hong Kong and ETG Staging Connections China installed the equipment, including eight Hippotizer HD media servers, routed through Barco Encore processors and controlled by two GrandMA full-size consoles.
"This was a very large production with many elements," says Loren Barton, TMB product specialist. "Hippotizer's control interface allows for easy live blind programming which made last minute changes easy to implement, even during the show. Hippotizer's Zookeeper software enabled the programmers to view live previews from any location on the network.
"Hippo's active interface shows what the lighting console is sending, which makes programming much easier than working blind. With a large, eight server system like this, HippoNet really made a difference, allowing simultaneous synchronization of both media and playback - 100% frame locked."
Sha Xiaolan of Beijing Olympics fame designed the show with Hippotizer media content provided by CCTV's special media group, headed by Xia Dao. Chris Lim of ETGSC was lead programmer for the show. "Amongst other features, the Hippotizer was specified for its extremely smooth playback characteristics," says Lim. "We've had great success with the Hippotizer on other projects and with each application we discover more of its power and flexibility. Like a fine musical instrument, it just gets better the more you use it."
(Jim Evans)
