Butcher Bird Studios Shields Your 4K and VR Workflow with AJA Routers

Kumo routing solutions from AJA allow the Los Angeles production company Butcher Bird Studios study the potential of virtual reality in all types of contexts with simple signal transport, low latency I/O and redundancy.

Butcher Bird Studios carries out a wide range of projects: from proprietary IP to traditional interviews, large-scale live-streamed events, virtual productions and immersive virtual reality experiences. In the latter field, the company has provided 180° and 360° virtual reality content to clients such as Meta y BuzzFeed, and has collaborated with Canon to document best practices for 180° VR filming and post-production.

With such a diverse project list, Butcher Bird spends a lot of time creating and testing new workflows. To optimize its signal flow, the company uses routers AJA Kumo 12G-SDI and 3G-SDI, including a Kumo 3232-12G, and Kumo 1616-12G and a Kumo 1616 (3G-SDI).

These teams, explains the technical director Brian Druckman, allows staff to monitor recordings “without having to crowd around a single screen”: “Kumo routers are a perfect fit for what we do. They are fast, reliable and easy to manage. Their web user interface is ideal for keeping signals organized. The hardware strikes the perfect balance between industrial and ease of use. Plus, it introduces very little latency, making everything very responsive for operators, talent and the public.”

In order to address the redundancy, Butcher Bird relies heavily on pre-saved routing tables known as “saved”. It does this by running primary and backup vMix systems for each project, so that if the primary system fails, the salvos allow the team to instantly redirect the backup to the correct destination. "Kumo's saves are very easy to set up and you never have to worry about them again. Once set up, we can trust that our backup will work, which gives us peace of mind."

In addition to Kumo, Butcher Bird often incorporates a AJA Io 4K Plus in remote projects to support I/O Thunderbolt external for encoding configurations. This allows them to reduce their ecological footprint by using laptops or compact systems that run OBS o vMix, instead of large workstations.

Coordinating a 4K production in real time with Kumo

Recently, Butcher Bird deployed AJA solutions in a green screen-based multi-camera virtual production. For this project, the production company used a workflow 4K with three cameras and placed monitors around the stage so that the actors could see the performance live with the composite images and thus be able to react in real time.

All signs, from ISO from the cameras to the Composite outputs and isolated backgrounds, had to be sent to monitors, other screens and recorders throughout the studio, for which Butcher Bird deployed routers AJA Kumo 3232-12G. "The Kumos were instrumental for us on this project. They allowed us to maintain a smooth, low-latency production environment, even when sending composite signals to monitors and recorders. Without the flexibility and reliability of Kumo, this workflow would have been difficult to execute. The AJA equipment allows us to keep all of our signals organized both in the studio and when working remotely," explains Druckman.

Looking to the future, Butcher Bird plans to expand its virtual capabilities, live and immersive. To achieve this, the incorporation of emerging technologies of remote production and artificial intelligence in its studio and its remote processes. Regardless of what new technologies and techniques it adopts, Druckman has expressed confidence in continuing to employ AJA technology for video routing and I/O stability for the studio's upcoming projects.