Adobe MAX is dubbed the ‘Creativity Conference’, but WorldStage took that meaning to a whole new level during the 2016 event. WorldStage demonstrated its projection mapping expertise for the fifth consecutive year and for the first time it performed using a full-4K environment. To achieve such heights, the company used Christie Boxer 4K projectors.
Billed as the world’s leading creativity conference, Adobe MAX 2016 drew more than 10,000 attendees, its biggest general session audience ever, to the San Diego Convention Center. In addition to handling the 4K video mapping for the general session, WorldStage provided all the video, display and audio systems plus production intercoms for the general session.
WorldStage once again teamed with event producer Pix Productions and scenic designer Peter Crawford to deliver 4K video content to a geometric configuration of multi-faceted screens stretching across the main stage. Acting as both display surfaces and scenic elements, the screens were approximately 200ft wide and 32ft tall. They showcased the dynamic opener, created by Pretty Damn Sweet, which filled the screens with moving patterns and lights, retro Op Art-style designs, live-action video and animations. The screens also supported keynote addresses and presentations with IMAG and PIP windows. Six 16×9 delay screens were positioned back in the house.
“It was an infrastructure challenge to deal with that much 4K video,” says Alex Bright, display systems EIC for WorldStage. “The scale of the screens was about as big as the convention center allowed, and content delivery required four times the bandwidth of HD for every single projector. However, using the high-resolution, high-brightness Boxers, allowed us to use fewer projectors to cover a large area.”
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WorldStage deployed 28 Christie Boxer 4K30 projectors, one of the largest Boxer 4K implementations ever for a corporate event. The company designed a sophisticated delivery system that combined a large d3 Technologies server farm with four Spyder X20 image processors to deliver a full 4K signal path to the Christie Boxers.
The d3 media servers consisted of 4x4PRO’s with four-output VFC cards. “We couldn’t have played back that much 4K content without the 4x4s. The size of the canvas and the amount of pixels we were pushing to them – it was pretty remarkable. You couldn’t even have fathomed it two years ago,” says Alex.
In pre-production, WorldStage used d3 previs to determine the placement of the Boxers, which was critical due to the faceted nature of the set design. “We had to figure out how high to hang the projectors so they didn’t cast shadows on the screens, and we needed to determine the relative brightness required.” WorldStage tapped d3’s QuickCal feature for rapid projector alignment.
Adobe MAX 2016 integrated video display into the functional on-stage podiums, or ‘demo peds’, for the first time adding yet another visual element to the general session. WorldStage installed a 5×2-configuration of Unilumin 3.9mm LED tiles on the face of each demo ped. The d3 4x4pros fed graphical content to the LEDs.
To capture the conference for web streaming and IMAG, WorldStage also provided an eight-camera HD system featuring both manned and robotic cameras. On the audio side, WorldStage furnished a mixed JBL and d&b speaker system.
This article was originally posted on Commercial Integrator Europe.
