The Starlite Festival entrusts its audiovisual aspect to Blackmagic

Marcelo Savio, technical director of Starlite Films, responsible for the production and broadcast of the Festival Starlite, shows how the festival's production team uses Blackmagic Design to offer live audiovisual production and content intended for broadcast with very tight delivery times.

Every summer, nestled in the cliffs of the Nagüeles quarry, in Marbella, Starlite Occident Transform nights into unforgettable memories. Half boutique music festival; Half gastronomic experience, half social center, it hosts more than sixty concerts by global superstars: Lenny Kravitz, Andrea Bocelli, Alejandro Sanz, Elton John y Ricky Martin…All of them, under the stars in one of the most unique outdoor settings in Europe.

Starlite Films, led by technical director Marcelo Savio, is in charge of the production and broadcast of the festival. With the support of More Than Video, Savio has designed and built a flexible audiovisual solution based on Blackmagic Design solutions. The result is a system robust and modular which has become the trusted standard for Starlite shows year after year.

"We needed a modular and integrated ecosystem that offered creative flexibility and high performance, whether we were outdoors in Marbella or indoors for the winter edition. The system had to be robust, scalable and low latency to adapt to the technical demands and innovative format of each show," explains Savio, who highlights that the choice of Blackmagic Design had the strong support of Ignacio Maluquer, co-founder of the Starlight business group, who has an engineering background. "We wanted a technology that combined operational reliability with compatibility with modern data flows. Blackmagic allowed us to create an integrated, open architecture that does exactly that," he confirms. crazy.

Capturing unique moments on stage

To offer complete live coverage, Starlite Films relies on a multi-camera package which includes seven cameras URSA Broadcast G2 Equipped with 12x to 40x zoom lenses. Five of these cameras are mounted on pedestals: two at the front, one on a rail near the stage for dynamic shots, and two others positioned between the audience and on stage to capture unique angles.

Additionally, two cameras have been installed Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K G2 between instruments on stage to capture intimate details and unique close-up angles from inside the performance. “Thanks to their ability to operate wirelessly, these cameras are ideal for following artists,” explains Savio.

The team also sets up a Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K G2 on a cablecam system, allowing for cinematic aerial shots of the entire venue: "The mountainous setting of the quarry is an important part of the festival's atmosphere. It would be a missed opportunity not to show it. We normally use the cablecam during golden hour to capture the best light."

Each fixed camera in the quarry has more than 200 meters of SMPTE fiber that connect it with the control room. There, eight converters Blackmagic Studio Fiber They handle 12G-SDI bi-directional transmission, remote control of cameras, tally, intercom and power through a single cable.

Control of signal production and routing

At the heart of the main control room is a switcher live production ATEM Constellation 8K, along with a ATEM 2 M/E Advanced Panel 30, installed in the technical area under the stage. Savio says: "The switcher gives us the flexibility and reliability we need to make programs in 4K while managing a large number of inputs and sources. This includes live camera feeds, graphics overlays and LED wall content."

To ensure uninterrupted operation, Starlite has established a fully redundant backup control room in a separate part of the premises, ready to take over in case of failure. Recording and playback are managed by six broadcast decks HyperDeck Studio 4K Pro rack-mounted, used for ISO and program (PGM) recording in ProRes to SSD, with automatic backup to local servers.

a seventh HyperDeck Studio 4K Pro dedicated team handles playback of graphics, videos, text and teleprompter scripts during the show: “All media assets are prepared in advance on Mac workstations and loaded onto a Blackmagic Cloud Store 20 TB. “The HyperDecks access this shared storage over 10G Ethernet, enabling real-time playback for LED screens and stage visuals.”

Video signal routing throughout the festival is managed by a router Blackmagic Videohub 40×40 12G, connected directly to the main control room. From there, the signals are distributed via fiber to different areas of the compound, where local climbers and units Micro Converter BiDirectional SDI/HDMI 12G They take care of the format and resolution conversion. To ensure redundancy, a drive has been installed Blackmagic Videohub 20×20 12G in the backup control room.

The entire system controls 380 square meters of LED screens installed throughout the festival site, including a main screen (18 x 10 meters), two side screens (10 x 5.5 meters each) in the main auditorium and more than 100 meters of linear LED screens around the seating area, including the VIP area. To ensure reliability of the entire system, Starlite's infrastructure combines fiber optics, SDI and segmented IP networks.

The capa IP Allows remote control of switches, routers and HyperDecks through software ATEM Software Control, Videohub Control and the protocols Ethernet the HyperDeck, with full integrated redundancy. Each carrying case is equipped with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to ensure power stability and protection against voltage spikes.

Post-production and delivery in the cloud

With the entire system designed around a unified workflow of Blackmagic Design, the camera feeds and final mix are recorded and immediately available for post-production, allowing the team to deliver new broadcast content within days of each show. All post-production work is done in DaVinci Resolve Studio on Mac workstations for editing, color grading and finishing. "With DaVinci Resolve's cloud workflows, all project assets are automatically synced through Blackmagic Cloud. It's fast, reliable, and ideal for program production with tight deadlines, especially with our editing teams working remotely," says Savio.

To keep everything connected between live production and post-production, a Blackmagic Cloud Store de 20 TB serves as a shared storage hub, where all key assets (ISO recordings, timelines, graphics and pre-rendered content) are stored and made instantly accessible to all team members: "Madrid editing and grading teams can access synchronized project assets, including timelines, LUTs, metadata and project files, and start working almost immediately after each gig. Every change made to the project is automatically logged and we can easily revert to previous versions at any time. This allows the team to experiment and refine edits or grading without the risk of overwriting someone else's work or losing progress,” he continues.

This fast and flexible workflow supports Starlite Universe, a weekly 25-minute television show that is recorded nightly. The program is broadcast on Antenna 3 International and is distributed in more than 100 countries, including the United States and Latin America.