RUSHWORKS, provider of cool technology for production, playback and streaming since 2001, enters the market with a bang for 2020, introducing another “powerfully simple” integrated PTZ production system for remote and studio operation.

“It’s truly astounding what technology is serving up” says Rush Beesley, RUSHWORKS president. REMO NDI incorporates a touch screen computer with super-fast processing, providing a small footprint system with enormous capabilities that marry well with RUSHWORKS mature production and camera control technology.

“NDI connectivity has transformed traditional wiring requirements into a few CAT5 cables that carry video, audio, PTZ camera protocols and power”, Beesley says. “We put more power and functionality into a couple of rugged Pelican cases than you’ll find in most OB (Outside Broadcast) vans … at a fraction of the size, cost and operational complexity.”

The standard REMO NDI system is powered by an All-In-One computer with 24” touchscreen and blazing fast i9 processor operating on Windows 10 Pro with 1TB SSD storage. It includes the RUSHWORKS custom shortcut keyboard, six-button Hall-effect joystick, an eight-port PoE GigE switch, and two (2) NDI PTZ cameras with 30x optical zoom lenses. It all fits in two ruggedized traveling containers with wheels and extendable handle.

Blackmagic Design today announced that live video for the European dates of Little Mix’s LM5 Tour was delivered by the LED Shed, who relied on acquisition and control hardware from Blackmagic Design. The solution featured URSA Mini Pro fiber chains and ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K.

LM5: The Tour is the sixth concert tour by British pop girl group, Little Mix. Opening at the WiZink Center in Madrid in September, the European tour has spanned 40 shows in total, concluding at London’s O2 Arena.

A multicamera fiber workflow was deployed for acquisition and IMAG relay, with two URSA Mini Pro cameras in the pit on a track and dolly system, two more front of house, and one in an elevated position at the back of the arena with a Canon 96x 4K long lens, to capture the band’s triangular platform that flew out across the venue.

The LED Shed’s Luke Levitt says: “We would usually have one camera in the pit, but with so much fast action on stage, having two meant that we could catch all of the choreography. It’s our job as video directors to make sure everyone in the room can see what’s going on, and it’s imperative to have as much movement in the cameras as possible to reflect that action.”

Custom Consoles announces the completion and installation of eight control desks and a large MediaWall monitor display support system for NEP Media Solutions BV. Located in the master control room at the company's studios in Hilversum's Media Park, the desks are configured in front and rear rows for use by up to six and four operators respectively.

"The desks are similar in style and colour scheme to a suite we produced in early 2018 for another NEP television studio facility," says Custom Consoles' Sales Manager Gary Fuller. "The forward desk centres on a dual-operator bridge with a total of eight forward-sloping 4U equipment pods. This is constructed as a rectangular unit with space for two operators. Left and right of the bridge are two units of identical design to the bridge but angled to match the curve of the 13.9 metre wide six-frame MediaWall."

"The MediaWall itself is one of the largest we have produced to date, each of the six frames accommodating four 55 inch UHD displays to create an 11-wide by two-high screen array with two additional pairs of 32 inch screens positioned to form vertical columns immediately left and right of the front-centre bridge desk. The result is a very elegant solution which can justifiably be termed state-of-the-art."

The final ISE exhibition in Amsterdam before the show’s move to Barcelona is shaping up to be a big one for video capture, conversion and streaming innovator Magewell. Exhibiting in stand 8-G475 from February 11 to 14, the company will feature the global debuts of new products alongside the first ISE showings of several recently unveiled solutions.

Making its world premiere at ISE 2020, the ultra-compact, power-efficient Eco Capture SDI 4K Plus M.2 card captures 4K video at 60 frames per second over a single-link, 12G-SDI interface for use with popular AV software applications. Four additional models in the Eco Capture family will also be shown, as well as the company’s popular Pro Capture series of PCIe cards and USB Capture line of external capture devices.

Magewell will also showcase the industry’s broadest range of low-latency NDI® hardware converters to help simplify the transition to AV over IP for both integrators and end users. The Pro Convert family now offers six NDI encoder models and two decoders, including the recently-released Pro Convert for NDI to HDMI decoder for transforming NDI streams into high-quality HDMI baseband outputs.

Gravity Media, a leading provider of outside broadcast trucks and flyaway production kits, is building further systems in preparation for premier sporting events in 2020, including a major football competition in Europe. Central to the new flyaway kits is the Platinum™ IP3 router from Imagine Communications.

The key to success in building flyaways is to create a system which provides all the resilience and reliability needed for live broadcasting, but in a compact footprint. As the name suggests, these often have to travel by air freight to meet deadlines, where additional space and weight can be prohibitively expensive.

“We picked the Platinum IP3 because we know it is reliable — we know what it does,” said Peter Newton, technical and operations director at Gravity Media. “Because of the established partnership with Imagine, we knew that we would get good support if we need it, and we will get ample utilization of the equipment. It is a good solid product that does what it says it will.”

Gravity Media has used equipment from Imagine Communications for over 15 years, which has established Imagine as a trusted partner. When it came to choosing routers for the new flyaways, Gravity Media compared all the popular models on the market, but was confident in selecting the field-proven Platinum IP3. The new flyaways will use both the 15RU and 28RU routers.

The key project for which these flyaways are designed requires support in 12 locations over a four-week period in June 2020. The kits will provide live production functionality. The Platinum IP3 routers incorporate integral multiviewer technology, reducing space in the racks and simplifying setup. The order also includes a number of modules from Imagine’s Selenio 6800+™ processing range, along with Magellan™ router control panels.

“While the headlines are about the transition to IP, it is important to remember that a lot of broadcasters and production companies need to extend and enhance existing, SDI-based systems,” said Mathias Eckert, SVP & GM EMEA/APAC, Playout & Networking, at Imagine Communications. “Because of our close partnerships with major operators like Gravity Media, we clearly understand the need for high-functionality, high-reliability SDI solutions, as well as IP technology, and we are committed to supporting our customers for as long as they need SDI, as part of our ‘your path, your pace’ approach to the IP transition.”

For more information about Imagine Communications’ products and solutions, please visit https://www.imaginecommunications.com.

TVU Networks, the global technology and innovation leader in live IP video solutions, announced that Spanish public broadcaster RTVE chose TVU equipment to follow the 2019 Rally of Morocco. RTVE’s coverage was a unique blend of action captured at close range with a smartphone running TVU Anywhere and more static moments shot using a standard camera setup with TVU One.

The Rally of Morocco is the most renowned rally in the country, bringing in the best racers every year. To provide viewers with an engaging live broadcast, RTVE sought a set of solutions whose versatility could match the liveliness of the rally.

RTVE found the answer in TVU Anywhere, the powerful application that turns mobile smart devices into HEVC transmitters with IS+ transmission algorithm. The Spanish broadcaster paired TVU Anywhere with the ultra-compact TVU Nano Router, which helped to ensure smooth, interruption-free transmissions by providing up to 200Mbps of secure, high-speed Internet by combining data from three different SIM providers. 

TVU One, the mobile live video transmitter with HEVC encoding, was also on standby for the event, deployed when RTVE needed to switch to a higher resolution transmission with ultra-low, sub-second latency. The combination of these TVU products helped RTVE effectively capture the fast-paced action of the 2019 Rally of Morocco, and the live broadcast was successfully aired to RTVE’s flagship website and TV channel.

The organisers of the Media Production and Technology Show 2020 are delighted to announce that registration for this year’s event, which takes place 13-14 May at London Olympia, is now open.

Featuring over 180 leading exhibitors on its show floor and 220 key industry speakers at its insightful panels and discussions, the must-attend content and technology show for the UK media and broadcast industries is projected to attract over 8000+ attendees. 95% of the exhibition space for the 2020 event is already sold, highlighting the strength of its position on the tradeshow calendar as the leading tradeshow in the UK.

Blackmagic Design today announced that live production workflows, featuring its products for acquisition, control and delivery, have been used on some of this year's biggest music festivals and concert tours.

Artists and events included Little Mix, Billie Eilish, Elton John, Fall Out Boy and Andrea Bocelli, as well as Festival Beauregard, Rocking the Daisies, Aftershock Festival and Sweden Rock.

As broadcast and AV workflows continue to converge, more and more rental and staging companies are now standardizing their video offerings to festivals and touring artists based on hardware solutions from Blackmagic Design. Not only has the amount of video demanded by the entertainment market increased in 2019, so too has the amount of 4K production for IMAG.

Clarity, ease of use and the ability to match the colour of the microphone to different skin tones were all good reasons why Toby Chevis, Director of UK live events company Patch Productions, chose DPA’s 6066 Subminiature Headset Microphones to amplify speakers at the prestigious Cheltenham Literature Festival.

During the 10 day event, the company used a total of 40 6066 Headsets across eight venues, including Cheltenham’s Montpelier Gardens and Town Hall sites. Among the famous participants who happily wore DPA were Andrew Lloyd Webber, Louis Theroux, Rob Drydon and Graham Norton.

“The festival was keen to be as inclusive as possible this year, so being able to offer a microphone with varying colours option, but the same audio quality, was fantastic,” Toby Chevis explains. “I’ve been a big fan of DPA Headset Microphones for eight years now and Patch Productions owns a number of 4000 Series Headsets, but for this event we bought additional microphones.”

The Cheltenham Literature Festival was broadcast on Sky Arts, which took a mixed feed straight from Patch Productions’ desk. Audio quality was very important as it was imperative that the audience could hear every word spoken by the authors on stage.

Medialease has won best ‘Asset Finance Intermediary’ at the Leasing Life 2019 awards, which brings together the most successful and innovative businesses throughout Europe in the leasing industry. 2019 has been a busy year for Medialease and the company was delighted to have been recognised for this award by industry-leading panellists.

The award judges commented that Medialease showed excellent growth and had a highly-targeted asset/industry focus, providing strong value to a very specialised end user. Medialease were also deemed to have very clear empathy and support to its chosen market, which is reflected in its exceptionally-high repeat customer statistics.

Medialease arranges asset funding tailored to the needs of the broadcast, film, television, AV and live events markets. Its relationships with many of its customers go back several years, with broadcasters and post-production companies returning to Medialease at each phase of their business plans to upgrade equipment or improve facilities. With a deep understanding of audio and video-based industries, the company supplies editing, grading and audio equipment for post-production facilities, along with the latest 4K cameras and location playout equipment for the world’s biggest sports and motorsports broadcasters. For further information, please contact us on 01327 872531 or visit www.medialease.com.

Refreshed with a new-look, Storm Post Production has upgraded to Avid NEXIS | PRO, complete with MediaCentral | Editorial Management, developing and adapting its existing workflows to new technologies and providing a solid, consistent service for its clients. Storm’s impressive London facility is fully prepared for handling higher-resolution and HDR media, from ingest right through to delivery, with the new Avid products further improving production efficiency.

Storm is a multi-genre end-to-end post-production facility, specialising in factual documentaries and entertainment programmes for UK and international broadcasters. Its new Avid MediaCentral | Editorial Management workflow management system, together with upgraded Avid NEXIS shared storage, has been installed and configured by Altered Images and has already boosted Storm’s productivity. It has provided editors and production teams with greater workflow integration and flexibility, notably being able to access and edit media remotely.

“Our latest NEXIS and Editorial Management upgrade has really helped us streamline several processes and provide our customers with powerful tools to help satisfy their requirements and deliver content of a high-standard.” explained Jay Makwana, Storm’s Commercial Director. “We’re continuously looking for ways to develop and expand our capabilities in order to strengthen workflows and stay ahead of the curve.”

Blackmagic Design today announced that Grid VFX relied on Fusion Studio throughout its in house compositing pipeline to deliver newly released children’s animated feature, Latte & The Magic Waterstone.

Directed by Regina Welker, the team’s latest project ‘Latte & The Magic Waterstone’ involved the completion of more than 1,200 visual effects shots, including the complex compositing of background and foreground plates and CG render layers for 3D assets, lighting, procedural effects, and more.

“Latte was a huge project for us. It’s a feature animation with a limited budget, so we knew we had to work as efficiently as possible,” begins compositing supervisor at Grid, Laurens Bekaert.

“Fusion’s GPU accelerated render engine was amazing at being able to handle geometry and 3D space compared to alternative compositors. We could add smoke and particles behind our characters and see a good representation of how they would look in 3D instantly, without needing to re render.”

Custom Consoles announces the completion of Module-R studio control desks and two MediaWall monitor display mounts for Cardiff University's School of Journalism, Media & Cultural Studios. The desks and display mounts form part of a full broadcast-quality news studio facility designed by UK-based system integrator ATG Danmon.

"We were invited to propose a turnkey solution based on an outline specification provided by the university," explains ATG Danmon Managing Director Russell Peirson-Hagger. "The project coincided with a relocation to new city-centre premises. It comprised a large TV studio and dedicated gallery, a smaller TV studio with its associated gallery, plus a broadcast newsroom. These will be used to train the next generation of television, radio, online and printed-media journalists. Module-R desks and MediaWalls are used in many broadcast facilities in the UK, Europe, MENA and Asia, so were a logical choice given the need to match the functionality and processes of a real broadcast environment. They are robustly constructed, ergonomically efficient for engineering staff and well as operators, and attractively styled. Both product series also gave us the freedom to match the available room dimensions from standard modular elements."

Altered Images, a leading UK supplier of visual communications technology solutions, has chosen Custom Consoles Module-R, M-Desk Technical and custom-designed studio furniture for a newly completed broadcast media training suite at Plymouth Marjon University.

The new resource includes a total of seven desks in an open plan configuration. Located on the former BBC South West villa site in Plymouth, it is equipped with all the facilities required for the university's courses in journalism and broadcast production. These include a four-camera TV studio, a TV news room and TV production gallery, a radio news room, radio studio and central apparatus room.

"The design brief we were given was to create a fully professional radio and TV production environment including latest-generation Dante IP networking", says Altered Images' Media and Broadcast Solutions Director Russell Butcher. "Custom Consoles desks are very widely used throughout the broadcast media industry so will be met by many students as they progress into their careers. The desks and equipment bays look good, are ergonomically comfortable and efficient, and are very long-lasting."

Magewell will launch a powerful new model in its Eco Capture family of ultra-compact, power-efficient, M.2 video capture cards at the upcoming ISE 2020 exhibition in Amsterdam. The high-performance Eco Capture SDI 4K Plus M.2 captures one channel of 4K video up to 4096x2160 at full 60 frames per second over a single-link, 12G-SDI interface. The new card will make its global debut in stand 8-G475 at the event, taking place February 11-14, 2020.

Ideal for use in small and embedded systems where full-sized PCIe slots are not available, the cost-effective Eco Capture family offers systems integrators and OEM developers a robust capture solution with low power consumption for space-constrained applications. The low-latency Eco Capture devices feature a high-speed PCIe 2.0 bus interface with an M.2 connector and measure just 22x80mm (0.87x3.15in), matching the M.2 2280 size specification.

The new 4K 12G-SDI model joins four existing Eco Capture M.2 configurations: a single-channel model that captures 4K video at 30fps via an HDMI interface; dual-channel models that capture HD and 2K video over HDMI or SDI; and a quad-channel HD/2K model with SDI inputs. All five Eco Capture products also support up to eight channels of embedded audio per input.