Hippotizers drive Take That on Your Songs special
- Details
Billed as a celebration of popular music, Your Songs sees well-known artists sing one of their most successful tracks while enveloped in visuals and accompanied by a live orchestra. The LED Main Wall measured 16m x 5m at 4096 x 1280 pixels, while an 8m x 2.5m LED ‘Talk Wall’ displayed secondary graphics. A series of ‘gardenfence’ LED strips surrounded the stage, pumping out 12300 x 1450 pixels of graphics.
The data-heavy visuals were designed by Saskia Olma and Vlad Befus of LUPIXX. “Every artist got the video content individually designed just for them,” they said. “This year was the second time [broadcaster] MDR asked us to design the content and we wanted it to be unique and outstanding to match the songs and the stage. The visuals were all pre-made using Notch and then rendered out for a timecode sshow. We used two live Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers and two more as backup and were impressed by the hardware and software stability, considering they had so much data to manage.”
Enrico Walther served as video operator for Your Songs, using the Boreal+ MK2 which was operated using a grandMA3 console. “Using the Hippotizers, the results were smooth, fluid and very nice,” says Walther. “The Timecode is user-friendly, the server can be operated from the lighting console, and its reliability and rendering processing power when it came to the LED screens and strips was fantastic.
“In addition, this was the first time we tried out the NotchLC Codec and it was a big time saver in terms of rendering. The fact that all visuals created in Notch could be played on the Hippotizers was great, and using the VideoMapper software to manipulate the visuals for the LED ‘gardenfence’ strips was simple.”
This season of Your Songs featured Ronan Keating (of Boyzone fame), US singer Anastacia, and German singer Wincent Weiss, among many others. After each performance, the singers sat down to chat with the presenters about their song and what it means for them and their fans.
