LOS ANGELES – Jay-Z's Blueprint 3 tour visuals have gotten an assist from PRG's Mbox Extreme v3 media server, with screens director Drew Findley and video director Dirk Sanders using the five-server system provided by PRG for multiple video surfaces that are part of the city skyline video wall set designed by UVA's Matt Clark. Sanders and Findley combined the Control Freak Encore DMX Bridge system with the PRG Mbox EXtreme v3 media server to create visual imagery for the tour, which is playing in arenas and stadiums around the world.
Sanders, who manages all the live camera feeds from backstage, explained the flow of the video system. "I am responsible for the cameras and the line cut which in turn becomes a source that Drew uses for content. Drew then controls the output of the Control Freak system and the Mboxes," he said. "The Mboxes, the cameras and the director's line cut, are inputs into the Encore System. Encore's output is what goes to the screens. At front of house, Drew blends the content with the cameras to create the looks and effects."
Findley credited this video setup for its creative flexibility. "Every song is approached differently. From front-of-house, I can select what outputs are routed where. Our Encore system has 12 layers; I can take one layer and make it an Mbox and make another layer a camera. I can have multiple media servers on one surface.
"The power of multiple Mbox media servers is a big advantage, especially when it comes to doing effects with live cameras," Findley added. "There are quite a few camera effects where I need the same camera on three to five layers, all with a little bit of a different effect layered on top. If I used a single Mbox I'd be using all the processing available to get a 1920 by 1080 camera output.
"It becomes really useful for me to take an additional media server and put it on a layer in Encore to create a ‘content background,'" Findley noted. "I can take another Mbox and have that one do an effected camera-look. I use keying effects inside the Encore to composite the images from the multiple Mboxes. I can even take yet another Mbox and feed that back to Dirk so that he can use that content in some of his side screen cuts where he wants to mix in with some of the camera looks."
"Drew uses my camera cuts through the Encore and Mboxes in a number of creative ways that are heavily effected," said Sanders. "By communicating constantly during the show I know where he is going next which allows me to get the shots set up that will work for best for each effect.
"It gets a little wild," Sanders added. "Mbox has fantastic live capture capabilities so we can get cameras to the screen through Mbox and do effects directly on them. The Mbox has been really reliable and road-worthy. It has allowed the design to progress as the show has progressed."
"Crossfading on the same layer allows me to write looks and cues without having to know exactly what look I am coming from or what look I am going to," said Findley. "Being able to set a crossfade time while I select the video files gives us a live element to the show, just like the lighting."
Mbox has native HD-SDI, SD-SDI and DVI outputs built-in, which bypasses the altered color and added frame delay caused by converters required most other servers to format the video. In addition, instead of requiring the use of a converter to genlock the output for synchronization, Mbox uses the genlock signal to alter the output from the computer. That helps ensure that multiple Mboxes will all draw the same frame at the same time. In addition, Mbox has native SMPTE Timecode inputs, so locking video files to SMPTE is as simple as plugging in the audio line, renaming a file and setting the play mode.
Findley said his favorite Mbox feature on the Blueprint tour has been Virtual Screen crops. "This feature is somewhat hard to explain but extremely cool if you have a number of video surfaces that will use one Mbox for playback," he noted. "I was able to create screen crops for every tower, face of a tower, and groups of towers so I can instantly target content and cameras wherever I need them. I can define my ‘screens' and then on a per-layer basis decide if a piece of content will playback on the whole output or just in one screen. Later I can redefine the screen layout and all my programming will update, meaning I can move my screens around in the pixelmap and I don't have to reprogram."
Findley credited PRG's support throughout the tour. "PRG has upgraded the Mbox computers and the graphics cards so I am able to do quite a bit more now with the same software. The Mbox is the most complete media server solution out there and PRG's support has been over the top throughout the tour."
For more information on PRG, please visit www.prg.com.
Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage
