Eplus equips new streaming studio with Blackmagic Design solutions

Several Blackmagic Design products bring to life the new eplus studio, which will specialise in music-focused streaming.

The studio, which has already been used by various artists and media outlets for talk shows and online events, offers exceptional acoustics that give musicians such as hit singer Masayoshi Yamazaki the opportunity to stream live performances with high-quality audio. In order to integrate it, Yoshihiro Yasuda of Sound Crew suggested to the eplus team that the devices used in this new infrastructure should not only be professional, but also easy for anyone to use. This led them to choose Blackmagic Design solutions.

Among the technological solutions integrated in the studio are an Atem 2 M/E Production Studio 4K mixer and an Atem 2 M/E Advanced Panel device to combine the images; a Smart Videohub 40×40 matrix and Smart Control Pro equipment for the purpose of distributing the signals; two HyperDeck Studio HD Pro and two HyperDeck Studio HD Plus units for recording and connecting video recorders; three Video Assist 3G monitors for monitoring external cameras; two Teranex AV processors for converting various formats; and several Micro Converters for HDMI to SDI 3G, SDI to HDMI 3G and SDI to Audio.

Studio users can operate any of the equipment on their own, although technical staff are always on hand to explain operation and troubleshoot problems, so that even a novice can transmit without any problems.

Connection to dressing rooms

In addition to the studio, two of the dressing rooms include the necessary connections to be used as recording spaces. In addition, each of these rooms is equipped with a monitor so that it is possible to see what is happening in the studio. In this respect, the Smart Videohub matrix is particularly useful, as it is responsible for distributing the signals to these screens.

Six months after the studio went live, Morio Takiguchi, a leading member of eplus’ audiovisual content department, is completely satisfied with the ease of use of the Blackmagic Design solutions: “Even if it’s not the exact switcher we installed here, many users have used other switchers from Blackmagic Design, so even first time users seem to find it intuitive. We get a lot of questions about recording the streaming footage to the HyperDeck Studio Mini and playout video from HyperDeck Studio Mini during streaming, as well as downstream keying with the ATEM switcher, and when we explain it to them, they immediately understand and use it.”