Arkaos' new 4K media servers "dance on ice" on television in Germany

Arkaos has provided a 360-degree video solution for the recent fourth German edition of the popular television franchise 'Dancing on Ice', which was recently filmed at the Magic Media Company's Coloneo venue in Ossendorf.

Eight of the new 4K servers Arkaos have offered a 360-degree video solution for the recent fourth German edition of the popular television franchise Dancing on Ice, which was recently filmed at the Magic Media Company's Coloneo site in Ossendorf, Cologne, in a special montage that was customized for the first series.

The lighting designer for the show was Manuel Da Costa, well known in the television world, and has illuminated DSDS and many other German music and talent shows.

Da Costa worked alongside his usual visual designer, Dennis Muhl, who wanted to run the video tracks through his grandMA3 console. The display and video supplier was ETC Germany.
They approached Arkaos looking for a new server solution that could deliver high-quality rendering performance, and that was easy and intuitive to control from a lighting console.

They needed this for fast and accurate video mapping of the LED screen covering 360 square meters and enveloping the studio which was integral to the production design...as well as the hardware with genlock capabilities.

The LED screens were of three different pitches (2.8, 5.7 and 8.6), and the two main rings around the studio were 6768 and 8568 x 144 pixel resolution, respectively. In addition to this, four LED banners stretched between 1768 and 4160 by 728 pixels next to an LED strip in front of the jury position.

Eight were used videoproyectores Panasonic of 31,000 lumens to project detailed and intricate images onto the ice, effectively using it as another screen.

On top of all that, there were 44 LED universes that needed to be mapped – over the network – on the grandMA2 lighting console.

Dennis had in mind to use Arkaos 4K servers after a meeting at the ISE show in 2018 with Olli Winkler from LMP, the German distributor of Arkaos.

After the exhibition, Dennis and his colleagues attended one of Arkaos' regular free training programs to delve deeper into the Belgian brand's popular MediaMaster software and its intuitive VideoMapper.

Dennis saw this as an ideal opportunity to check out the MediaMaster software with DOI in mind, after which he ordered a demo version to test it further.

Exceeding technical limits

Olli and Dennis met Manuel Da Costa at the headquarters of the latter's company MDC, where they discussed the general production design that Manuel had in mind and how the ArKaos system would help facilitate the specific aesthetic.

They all embraced the idea of pushing technical limits and using the 4K server to handle high-quality video content fully integrated into the lighting console.

Everyone had many questions related to the performance of the servers in relation to the HAPQ codec high quality, as the size of the video content was huge. They also talked extensively about the new features of the DMX surface control of Arkaos, as they would be the first visual team in the world to use it.

After this, ETC Germany ordered the eight servers, plus a spare, so that Dennis and Manuel could have the powerful, flexible and dynamic video control they needed.
The hardware was delivered directly to the MMC studios where the servers were installed by Dennis, as well as Olli Winkler, who also supported the first setup and was available to Dennis and Viola Weinert, MDC's server farmer, during programming.