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Florida Georgia Line Tours with Chauvet Professional Strike 4 Fixtures

Baz Halpin and Chris Nyfield are using 62 Strike 4 warm white LED fixtures from Chauvet Professional.

Florida Georgia Line Tours with Chauvet Professional Strike 4 Fixtures

NASHVILLE — For Florida Georgia Line’s Dig Your Roots tour, named for the country duo’s third album, which is due out in Aug. 2016, Baz Halpin and Chris Nyfield are using 62 Strike 4 warm white LED fixtures from Chauvet Professional. The LDs arranged the Strike 4s, which were supplied by PRG, on five light ladders. Positioned on a trolley style track upstage, the ladders can be moved horizontally during the show. Running their rig with a grandMA2, Halpin and Nyfield control each 100-watt LED cell in their Strike 4 fixtures individually.

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Blackmagic Design Duplicator 4K

Blackmagic Design Duplicator 4K and ATEM Switcher 6.8 Update

This year at the NAB show in Las Vegas, Blackmagic Design introduced a new product that no one was really expecting, but that hits an interesting spot in the industry. It’s called the Blackmagic Duplicator 4K, and this product just may have tapped into something pretty hip. It is a recording device that allows you to record SD, HD or Ultra HD content in real time on up to 25 SD cards simultaneously. With live events in mind, you can then distribute or sell the SD cards to customers or audience members right when the event is finished.

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Avolites Arena Console

Avolites Arena Console

Avolites has been in the console game for a long time, but their popularity in the States was never as strong as in Europe. The choice of a console is a very personal matter for any LD, and — full disclosure — for many years, I chose to use consoles other than Avolites because I had a perception that they were difficult to use. The Titan operating system, introduced almost concurrently with an updated line of Avo consoles, however, sought to change all that, and today we’re going to look at their latest offering — the Avolites Arena.


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The grandMA2-controlled rig includes Martin MAC Viper Wash DXs and MAC Aura XB moving lights

LD Dan Tiley Gets Assist for Il Divo’s ‘Amor & Pasión’ Tour from HSL

LONDON – Il Divo, the vocal quartet comprised of male singers from the U.S., France, Spain and Switzerland that got its start in the U.K. back in 2003, has been touring in support of their Nov. 2015 album release, Amor & Pasión” (Love & Passion). HSL is supporting the tour with an expanded array of lighting fixtures in its inventory including Martin MAC Viper Wash DXs and MAC Aura XB moving lights. LD Dan Tiley, who is getting an assist for this tour from HSL project manager Andy Chatburn, is using a grandMA2 console for control.

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Blizzard Lighting Oberon Fresnel Zoom

Blizzard Lighting Oberon Fresnel and Oberon Fresnel Zoom

Blizzard Lighting’s Oberon fixtures, including the Oberon Fresnel and Oberon Fresnel Zoom (pictured here), offer a 3200K-3500K tungsten color while attaining a high CRI of 95 that can be directly compared to natural sunlight. The LED fixture adds to the complete line of conventional light fixtures the company has to offer the lighting marketplace.

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Hubbell Control Solutions' HCS wiSCAPE Gateway is now available with BACnet IP built-in support.

Hubbell Control Solutions Updates HCS wiSCAPE Gateway

Hubbell Control Solutions has updated its wiSCAPE Gateway, which is designed to make it easy to manage, monitor and measure wireless outdoor lighting networks. The wiSCAPE Gateway manages up to 1,000 wiSCAPE fixture modules, controlling dimming, scheduling and motion detection features.  For enhanced network management and security, the device operates on Windows 7 Professional Edition. IT Administrators can easily manage it as they do all the PCs on their network. The wiSCAPE Gateway is now available with BACnet IP built-in support.

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Martin MAC Axiom Hybrid

Martin MAC Axiom Hybrid

In the last year or so, the industry has seen the advent of the small footprint, hybrid light fixture. Unlike the large model fixtures that can take the place of a wash, spot or beam fixture dependent on their light’s output beam, these smaller lights are not the all-in-one hybrids they claim to be. But as far as functions go, it’s plain to see that Harman’s Martin Lighting excels in areas where others took shortcuts and is hands down the best little moving light in its class right now.

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DOKA provided the gear.

Moscow’s Helikon Opera Upgrades with Close to 100 Clay Paky fixtures

MOSCOW – Moscow’s Helikon Opera re-opened with a gala concert in November 2015 after many years of reconstruction and refurbishment. Clay Paky’s long term Russian distributor, DOKA Center, prepared the specification and recommended Clay Paky fixtures. The venue has invested in almost 100 Clay Paky fixtures as part of the most recent modernization. These include 6x Alpha Spot HPE 1200; 16x Alpha Spot QWO800; 6x Alpha Wash HALO; 4x Alpha Wash 1200; 16x A.leda Wash K20; and 4x Alpha Profile 700 in the bigger hall and 6x Alpha Profile 700 ST; 6x A.leda B-EYE K20; 14x Sharpy; and 18x A.leda B-EYE K10 in the venue’s smaller performance space.

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Fig. 1: With 38 universes of pixel tape being controlled, organization was key.

From Video to Pixel Map: Another Use for that Video Input on your Media Server

With the rise in popularity of LED products on the market, it’s practically a given that at some point you will find yourself working with pixel mapping. This can be very easy, especially when the content you intend to use is loaded onto the media server that’s doing the pixel mapping. But what do you do when a client has a content playback device that does not output Art-Net or DMX, does not have a pixel mapping interface, and only outputs a video signal? If you have a media server with a video input card, then you’re in luck! You can use that for another creative purpose beyond simply displaying output from a camera. How? By converting a video signal to DMX values for pixel mapping.

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The author's perch. (He's hidden, behind the spotlight.)

“Dear Mr. LD:” A Spotlight Operator Pens an Open Memo to Lighting Designers

Memorandum
To: All Lighting Designers
From: Your local spotlight operator
Re: Calling the spotlights at a large arena show

Hi, I’m your local spotlight operator. You might not know my name, but I’d like to request that you please don’t use profane language if things don’t go exactly as planned during your performance. We try our best, honest. We want to make your act shine. So I’d like to take a minute to explain a few things from our side of the intercom line if you got a sec.

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Brad Schiller

Spinning in Circles

The automated lighting industry has seen a new trend in lighting products over the last few years. We now have many creative LED products that are making use of continuous rotation of pan and tilt. This type of movement opens up some exciting new possibilities and designers are placing the fixtures all over their plots. The technology to endlessly rotate fixtures is not new, and in fact was used quite some time ago with standard discharge fixtures. However, the concept never really took off until it was applied to an LED panel. Now programmers and designers have many different tools that take advantage of continuously rotating pan and tilt.

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