SINGAPORE – A squadron of six Avolites Ai Infinity EX8 servers were out in force for the Singapore National Day Parade celebrations in August driving specially created content onto a massive 400m-long LED screen.
More details from Avolites (www.avolites.com):
Singapore-based The Show Company, which specializes in large-scale productions and offers ‘a hearty appetite for innovation’, was challenged with finding the technology to pull off such an event, which celebrated 50 years of Singaporean independence. The team was employed by the Singapore Armed Forces, which ran the ambitious celebrations.
The huge LED screen was stretched out like a massive ultra curved HD screen all around central Singapore’s ‘Padang’ open playing field, and situated just behind the spectator stands. Content varied from visuals of the country’s flag to images celebrating the island nation’s rich history.
“We used a total of 6 Ai Infinity EX8 – three main and three hot backups – plus three Lightware Matrices which had all the outputs of the Ai Servers going in,” says The Show Company’s Rick Goh. “The signal was then sent out via 10 lines of 600m long fiber optic cables to the processors running the screens. The Ai servers were controlled via an Avolites Sapphire Touch. We had timecode being sent to us from the audio department which was used to trigger all the cue stacks done on the lighting desk.”
The team needed a server powerful enough to run a canvas of nearly 20 thousand pixels wide. Not only did it have to be powerful, it had to be flexible as well as be able to handle the quality of the content being rendered.
“The EX8’s Aim Codec is truly amazing, all I can say is that if you don’t see banding with content rendered at 6k pixels wide at the highest quality, it just goes to show we’ve picked the right server,” Goh continues. “The other feature that made Ai right for the job was that the Ai was able to pixel map content onto the LED screens with much ease. It’s not easy to map a 6k pixel wide content onto such a huge screen and we had a relatively easy time stitching three servers together to look like one long 20k pixel wide screen.”
For the first time since 1969, foreign Heads of State and Heads of Government attended the parade. The entire event was broadcast live across Asia and replayed on various channels, including YouTube, for a global audience.
“With so many people watching, we needed a reliable set up,” says Goh. “The servers did their job, everything went as it should and it ran perfectly on the most important day.
“The support Avolites has shown us for this project has been outstanding. We’ve had phone calls going in and out and Avolites has been very quick to respond to them. I’d very much like to give special thanks to Annalisa Terranova, Selvin Cooper, Gregory Haynes, Phil Mayer, Jack Sayer, Peter Budd, and Steve Warren especially for having such a great team and also for flying all the way down to Singapore to support us for the show. They’ve shown us great commitment and understanding throughout the entire duration of NDP 2015.”
Trusted for the world’s most incredible productions, Ai media servers are designed for maximum reliability, offering features such as internal EDID management, anti-shock, and a floating sub-frame construction.
