Avolites Ai R8 servers' versatility and speed power epic video content at The Festival Presidente

Avolites Ai R8 servers versatility and speed power epic video content at The Festival Presidente posted: 16/01/2018

Avolites Ai R8 media servers controlling the visuals for Gabriel at The Festival Presidente, Dominican Republic.

More than 50,000 fans packed the Dominican Republics Olympic Stadium in November to experience The Festival Presidente, the Caribbeans largest international music festival. On the festivals opening night, Latin music star Gabriel performed in front of epic LED screens displaying florid, fast-paced graphics, powered by Avolites Ai R8 media servers.

Yamil Charif of YC3 Lighting Design worked with a team of South American creatives, including lighting design partner Richard Vincens, to create the vivid Gabriel set. He initially programmed it using an Ai template at his Miami studio using dummy content before the real content, designed by a team of animators, was delivered just days before the event.

Avolites Ai R8 media servers controlling the visuals for Gabriel at The Festival Presidente, Dominican Republic.

With a team of people inputting ideas and many last-minute developments, Charif needed to continue programming the R8 servers right up until show time. Due to the number of artists performing at the festival, including Justin Timberlake, Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias, Charifs programming time on site was limited so he programmed both off-site and on the fly.

Avolites Ai R8 media servers controlling the visuals for Gabriel at The Festival Presidente, Dominican Republic.

Some of the final content was only delivered a day before the show, he says. Thankfully, the R8 servers are very strong because they are intuitive. You can tweak parameters as you go, producing really fast results. With the R8s you have versatility - by just right-clicking on a clip you can make changes to it or add timecode time to it. Its not complicated at all.

Avolites Ai R8 media servers controlling the visuals for Gabriel at The Festival Presidente, Dominican Republic.

The R8s rock-solid processing power delivered the spectacular, cartoon-like graphics, which were inspired by Gabriels album artwork. The content was mapped across the stages three super-sized LED screens - two batwing style screens at either side of the stage and one large, central display at the back.

Avolites Ai R8 media servers controlling the visuals for Gabriel at The Festival Presidente, Dominican Republic.

The Ai software also allows you to 3D map your screens via its built-in 3D Stage Visualizer, so I was able to program the entire show off-site, before being connected to the onstage screens to test it in the real environment.

Avolites Ai R8 media servers controlling the visuals for Gabriel at The Festival Presidente, Dominican Republic.

Once the team arrived at the venue, the content was tried out and some tweaks were made. If the artist wants me to change content last-minute, I need a machine that is able to do that, says Charif.

Avolites Ai R8 media servers controlling the visuals for Gabriel at The Festival Presidente, Dominican Republic.

For Gabriels show, Charif used one R8 as the main server and a second as backup. He utilised the R8s Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) capabilities so he could disconnect and reconnect servers when other designers worked with their artists.

Avolites Ai R8 media servers controlling the visuals for Gabriel at The Festival Presidente, Dominican Republic.

Using EDID made it pretty straightforward, he says. You can disconnect and reconnect and the output will always be emulated on the computers. We connected all the outputs to the switches; then disconnected when somebody else came through to do their part. But when we reconnected again, everything was still set up the way we had it.

Avolites Ai R8 media servers controlling the visuals for Gabriel at The Festival Presidente, Dominican Republic.

The Avolites Ai R8 server offers 8 display port outputs and up to 12 layers and 8 outputs depending on project configuration, with top spec, fully featured Miami licenses. It also supports MIDI/LTC Timecode inputs and Art-Net and Color Kinetics KiNet output protocols.

LINK:	http://www.live-production.tv/news/shows/avolites-ai-r8-servers-versat...
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