For this development, James Thomas’ R&D department has collaborated with IRAD, developers of the RADlite digital media server. The RADlite system fuses digital media with DMX-driven lighting consoles - for example, Avolites and WholeHog - giving DMX control of visual images via a familiar set of attributes - similar to programming a moving light. The collaboration between the IRAD and JTE teams has resulted in Pixeldrive - the RADlite control system being applied to JTE’s revolutionary Pixel Range of LED fixtures.
The new control system allows the synchronization of digital media to JTE’s high brightness Pixelline 1044 battens and other pixelrange products. When running, this will enable visual sequences to be run across both lighting and video media, encompassing the full onstage visual spectrum. Pixeldrive reduces the pre-production process that would normally consume hundreds of hours of complex, high-concentration programming time, to minutes. For example, to programme a water ripple effect across a bank of Pixellines would take about 30 seconds of programming.
The method imports digital media - the same media that is being projected by the RADlite system - into the Pixelline and other Pixelrange fixtures, which then act like another projection surface. The patterns created by these digital images can be manipulated via the lighting desk - in exactly the same way as the RADlite system performs. Complex lighting sequences can now be controlled with virtual imagery which is then sent to any multiples of Pixelrange products, using Ethernet to distribute across as many DMX universes as required, vastly reducing the DMX allocation on lighting desks.
Exceptionally large and complex colour mixing sequences are now possible with minimal pre-programming. A Pixelrange configuration of any type can be emulated on the Pixeldrive computer screen for programming, allowing LDs to pre-programme and work as quickly and easily offline as they can in situ. The main onstage and side-stage LED video screens can also potentially be sync’d in with Pixeldrive.
(Ruth Rossington)
