Adrenaline Films increases its live production with Blackmagic Design and Medialooks

The new infrastructure of the production company based in Orlando (USA) is based on Blackmagic products in combination with the solution for low latency Internet transmission Video Transport, developed by Medialooks.

Adrenaline Films, based in Orlando, Florida, USA, is using mixers ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K and playback and capture cards DeckLink of Blackmagic Design in its innovative virtual and live production services.

The new infrastructure based on Blackmagic Design products works in combination with the solution for low latency transmission by Internet Video Transport, developed by Medialooks.

Founded in 1991, Adrenaline Films is a production company with a headquarters of more than 2,300 m² in Orlando (Florida) and offers audiovisual production and post-production services to large companies in the entertainment industry and to technology and media companies, such as Universal Orlando Resort, CNN, NBC, Fox News, Amazon and Siemens.

With the arrival of COVID-19 in early 2020, Adrenaline Films had to shift from primarily offering multi-camera projects in studios to making a wide range of live and virtual productions, as well as corporate. In order to carry it out, the production company updated its facilities in Orlando by adding two new control rooms compatible with live and remote productions, and improving the editing stations and the production studio, with the purpose of carrying out large multi-camera projects, but always maintaining security and complying with prevention regulations.

This new infrastructure, which is connected to a 1 GP/S fiber optic network, was designed based on numerous Blackmagic Design products including an ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio mixer, multiple HyperDeck Studio recorders, Teranex converters, WebPresenter Internet streaming devices and DeckLink Quad 2 and DeckLink Mini Recorder PCIE capture and playback cards.

Tim Bartlett, vice president and general manager of Adrenaline Films, acknowledges that "COVID has forced us to do more live projects and change our business model. The Blackmagic Design teams gave us the opportunity to be really creative with the new design, and to be prepared to offer our services quickly. We were able to replace what we had with two new control rooms that in a few weeks allowed us to offer live and virtual events."

On the other hand, along with the work dynamics of Blackmagic Design, Adrenaline Films uses licenses from the program Video Transport de Medialook que permiten transmitir por Internet públicamente y de manera instantánea fuentes NDI y SDI remotas. Gracias a que dicho programa funciona a la perfección con las tarjetas DeckLink y el mezclador ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio, la productora cuenta con la oportunidad de ofrecer producciones a distancia de gran calidad que admiten decenas de fuentes y conectarlas directamente con las dos salas de control a fin de realizar tareas de edición, insertar gráficos y alternar las señales.

Desde que finalizó las nuevas salas de control e instaló la infraestructura basada en productos de Blackmagic Design y Medialooks, ha completado decenas de proyectos internacionales y a gran escala. These include a number of corporate, educational and entertainment projects, such as Tavistock Group and Lilium's virtual press conference announcing their joint venture of electric air taxis for short flights between Florida's largest cities.

Likewise, one of the control rooms has been used regularly virtual events in which national politicians and education leaders from all over the country have participated. In addition to such events, Adrenaline Films has been assisting its clients with COVID-compliant localization services, for example on Universal Studio's Bourne Stuntacular.

Virtual conference

La empresa se encargó de la producción de una conferencia virtual reciente, en la que durante cuatro días gestionó las señales remotas de los participantes de todo el mundo mientras interactuaban entre sí en tiempo real. Los invitados, provenientes de distinto lugares, recibieron unos kits de producción portátiles a fin de que pudieran contribuir con las imágenes de sus cámaras mediante el programa Video Transport. Estas señales independientes se transmitían en formato SDI y se enviaban al mezlcador ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K, además de grabarse aisladamente mediante el dispositivo HyperDeck Studio para ser editadas posteriormente.

Compositions were made with the sources and graphics, in order to send them back to the presenters through a DeckLink Quad 2 card. Meanwhile, the outgoing signal from the ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio mixer was also transmitted to the Blackmagic Web Presenter device, which on the Zoom platform is detected as a webcam.

"The integration of the Blackmagic and Medialooks systems has given us the possibility of making these virtual events as if they were a television program and with the same quality that would be expected from a professional broadcast. We could alternate the signals that we sent to the Zoom platform thanks to the ATEM switcher, and then transmit to the client a multiple display or a single signal, or alternate the sources as if it were a television program," concludes Bartlett.