When Guns N’ Roses’ successful ‘Not In This Lifetime’ tour switched to disguise for its North American leg, it opened up new creative possibilities to enhance the already visually spectacular rock show.

The tour wrapped last November with two shows at The Colosseum in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. The three-year world tour played 158 concerts selling more than 5 million tickets and grossing $584 million. The ‘Not In This Lifetime’ tour that started in 2016 marked the first time that Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan played together since 1993. Screenworks-NEP Live Events was the disguise rental partner for the tour.

Jeremy Leeor, Managing Director and Dan Potter, Creative Director, at disguise studio Creative Works London, coordinated the creation, execution and delivery of the Ghostrain and traditional show walk-in opening sequence using the new disguise and Unreal integration, currently going through Beta testing.

"A lot of what we created for the Guns’ tour visuals was built similarly to the way triple-A game assets are made using highly creative and flexible 3D tools like Cinema 4D, ZBrush, 3Ds Max and Substance Painter to create high-quality assets that can then be moved into real-time render engines like Unreal Engine,” explains Dan. “This is how we’ve always done it, and it makes a lot of our content stand out for its depth, texture and richness."

He points out that, “the rendering process on any project, in a conventional sense, presents many render engine and creative compositing options, and is central to how we achieve the diverse range of visual styles in our work. With the introduction of real-time render engines, you’re shifting the focal points of stages when you are developing a look to different points in the project timeline. This can be quite liberating if you’re working on something that plays to the strengths of the look you want to achieve and using the right tools to do it."

IABM-member PBT EU is delighted to announce that Auvi Translator Pro’s film and TV subtitler Riccardo Mimmi selects SubtitleNEXT as his subtitling system of choice to support leading film and television subtitling and localization projects

Riccardo has an impressive portfolio and has been translating and subtitling well-known movies, TV series, and documentaries from major Hollywood studios, broadcast networks and online streaming companies such as Netflix and Amazon over the course of his career. Some of the many titles he has worked on include ‘Klaus’, ‘Salvation’, ‘The Man in the High Castle’, ‘Vikings’, ‘American Hustle’, ‘The Americans’, ‘The Office’, ‘Easy’, the thriller film ‘Hold the Dark’, ‘Oprah’s Book Club’ and others.

Using SubtitleNEXT and proprietary online cloud platforms, Riccardo Mimmi’s role as a localization specialist and subtitler entails complex projects that involve translation and adaptation of content, where he has had to recreate the tone in documentaries, TV series and movies to suit the target audience.

“Subtitles have to abide to very strict requirements in my line of work,” Riccardo explains, “So I chose SubtitleNEXT which is a reliable professional subtitling software to ensure 100% accuracy, and it supports all popular formats like .stl, .srt, .dfxp, .pac, Digital Cinema and more.”

Blackmagic Design today announced that ViSo Video Solutions has upgraded its virtual reality studios, relying on Ultimatte 12 compositing processors and URSA Broadcast cameras, to produce national television commercials and shows, for clients such as Sky Italia, Mediaset, ESL and Netco Sports.

Founded in 2010, the company not only offers clients its VR services, it also creates all computer generated (CG) and 3D assets needed in house, and provides all post production which includes editing and grading in DaVinci Resolve Studio.

“Augmented and virtual studio environments bring so many benefits to productions,” begins Luigi Nino, general manager at ViSo. “We chose to develop our VR system in house so that we could control every aspect, and customize materials, lighting, animations and effects for each clients’ specific needs.”

The studio’s VR set is 130 square meters and uses three tripod mounted URSA Broadcasts as well as a dolly mounted 4.5m jib on a six meter track. An ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K, with ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel, is used for live vision mixing.

Promethean, a digital solution to dynamically deliver interactive video, has introduced Donation Overlay Templates for easily collecting donations during video streams without disrupting messages. Ideal for Houses of Worship, the new Donation Overlays will connect digital congregations and encourage generosity while streaming LIVE or via VOD content. 

Users can set up Donation Templates via a new editor and easily customise their Donation Overlay appearance with unique assets, key messages and edit the layout or appearance with intuitive fields and sliders. These templates can then be assigned to Donation Overlays which are scheduled onto their stream of choice ready for viewer interaction. Without disrupting the message, viewers will be greeted at key moments with a donation widget at the top of the screen that will let them leave a donation amount set in advance, or can be variable and chosen by the user.

Middle Atlantic Products, a brand of Legrand | AV, today announced its lineup for Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2020 at the RAI Amsterdam, Feb. 11-14. At the Legrand | AV Booth 2-C50, Middle Atlantic's Forward family of installation solutions — designed to deliver greater system reliability, efficiency, and flexibility to the rack — will be making its European debut, complete with a new 3D interactive touch screen tool for demonstrations. In addition, the company will highlight its High Power DC Power Distribution Series, which is now shipping from local inventory in Europe with region-specific power plugs.

"We're committed to providing more solutions and support for our European customers, and ISE provides us with a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate that," said Tim Troast, vice president of product management at Legrand | AV — Middle Atlantic. 

VuWall, a leader in video wall control systems, will be showcasing intelligent video wall and visualization solutions that allow operators and managers to "control what they see" on its booth (15-K250) at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2020. The company will debut its new ControlVu touch panel and showcase the new security features, capabilities, and flexibility of the powerful TRx centralized multivideo wall management platform; VuScape video wall controllers with KVM support; and VuStream encoders and decoders.

"Control rooms are not only becoming a necessity for organizations of all sizes and missions, operators are also requiring on-demand access to a robust array of AV and IT sources," said Paul Vander Plaetse, CEO at VuWall. "Our ecosystem of interoperable products provides the most effective distribution of any sources to any display surface throughout entire organizations. At ISE 2020, we'll demonstrate how VuWall seamlessly bridges AV and IT for an easy and intelligent way to control and manage any video wall deployment."

Fans watching live broadcasts of MotoGP races in Austria have been given an exclusive opportunity to personalise their viewing experience thanks to pioneering broadcast technology developed by Austrian solutions provider NativeWaves GmBH.

NativeWaves collaborated with Red Bull Media House to debut this exciting innovation at the Austrian MotoGP in Spielberg. Fans watching broadcast coverage on Austria’s ServusTV have been able to download a free MotoGP 2nd Screen App and use this to select their preferred perspective from various camera views on their mobile devices. This allows viewers to watch all the action perfectly synchronised across multiple screens. This innovation was available for all races following the Austrian MotoGP.

NativeWaves utilized the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud service portfolio to bring this groundbreaking experience to viewers. AWS CloudFront was used to distribute the content and achieve scale, while various other AWS services contributed towards easy development and management of this operation. Starting from managed database services to serverless solutions, AWS provided dependable cloud services to ensure the success of this project.

Marcel Hasenrader, CEO, NativeWaves, says: “NativeWaves technology answers a problem that the industry has faced for many years and we are delighted our solution allows broadcasters to engage viewers by offering additional content seamlessly across multiple devices.”

The AVer EP65 is an interactive flat panel featuring Zoom Rooms integration to go along with the latest AVer camera and audio technology, this 65” display can transform any meeting room into a streamlined collaboration hub for both video conferencing and face-to-face brainstorming. The EP65 allows users to interact, take notes, annotate on a shared screen and enable split-screen multitasking.

There’s no need to connect external devices to make a video call, as it comes equipped with a 4K camera with Sony Exmor™ 4K CMOS sensor, 13-element microphone array, and PC module powered by a Windows 10 IoT Intel i7-7700 Processor for true all-in-one capability. The EP65 is a cinch to set up; simply plug in one power cord and enjoy an extremely intuitive user experience in seconds.

Features 4K P-CAP touchscreen with 20 touch points, made of level 7 MoHS toughened glass that is resistant to glare and fingerprints. Users can mount the EP65 on the wall or affix it to a mobile rolling stand to take its powerful features all over the office and create a truly agile workplace.

MIRRAD supplies two Avolites consoles for Ben Everett’s design for producer, songwriter and performer’s headlining tour

A lot has happened in Maggie Rogers’ world since 2016, when a video of her demoing a then-newly-recorded song, “Alaska,” for Pharrell Williams at NYU went viral. Following opening slots on major tours with both HAIM and Mumford & Sons last year, Rogers dropped her own major label debut, Heard It in a Past Life, this past January, which charted in the second highest slot of the Billboard 200. Consequently, the artist has spent much of 2019 on the road in support of the album, performing a sold-out fall headline tour in such iconic venues as Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Berkley’s Greek Theatre, and New York City’s Radio City Music Hall.

The “look and feel” of Rogers’ tour this year has been a collaborative effort between the artist and Lighting Designer Ben Everett, who first started working with her when he lit Rogers’ first-ever show in London two years ago. Having toured with an impressive roster of bands over the past five years—including Bear's Den, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Dandy Warhols—Everett is now part of the UK-based MIRRAD team, which has been supplying a pair of Avolites Sapphire Touch lighting control consoles for Rogers’ 2019 worldwide trek.

Everett notes that he’s been using Avolites lighting consoles “pretty much since I started in the live music industry,” he shares. “I was lucky enough to learn on all of the early Titan software, and mainly used the Tiger Touch II and Quartz consoles to begin with. The features that kept me attracted to the desks at first were the ability to quickly create really impressive and intricate effects, and the user-friendly and multi-functional layout of the touchscreens. And while growing with the consoles over the years, the ease of being able to create cue stacks, key frame shapes, and pixel mapping really helps me in my day-to-day programming now.”