New Year’s Eve presents a broadcaster battleground in China as the main networks compete for the most-viewers crown. Satellite channel Hunan TV rose to the challenge, commissioning a countdown-to-2020 live show featuring big-name artists backed by party-enhancing lasers, lighting effects and video content.
Shanghai-based Honest AV was brought in to deliver a video solution for the ambitious programme, specifying ten Hippotizer Media Servers to drive visuals for more than 50 acts and events during the evening. The content was a mixture of live feed to IMAG screens and pre-made content by NDIMENSIONS.
“Two Boreal+ and four Boreal DVDL Media Servers were used to play the video material, three as the main output and three as hot backup,” explained Fei Zheng from Honest AV. “A further three Boreal+ machines were used on the VJ elements of the show.”
There were three stages on site: the main stage, a water curtain stage, and a small stage. The main Boreal+ and Boreal DVDL Servers outputted 21 signals to all LED screens on site, a huge total of 4000 square metres of screens.
“The NDIMENSIONS designers used the real-time rendering function of Hippotizer to simplify the time and cost of content production, using PREP to program in the early stages to improve work efficiency,” Zheng continues. “Before the performance, all content fed into the Hippotizer software was rendered and outputted through the After Effects component of FlexRes. Using this tool can greatly improve the efficiency of uploading materials on site, and protect copyright more effectively for designers.
“For us and for the production team, every function of Hippotizer is very practical – it provides a very stable platform, which is very important for such live programs.”
