Executing technically ambitious live streams, virtual productions, and immersive media today requires talent, creativity, and the right supporting technology. Los Angeles-based production outfit Butcher Bird Studios balances all three, with a skilled, nimble team of 10 people and a robust workflow. They execute a range of projects, from original intellectual property (IP) to traditional interview setups, large-scale livestreamed events, virtual productions, and immersive VR experiences. The company has delivered 180° and 360° VR media for clients like Meta and BuzzFeed, and worked with Canon to document best practices for 180° VR filming and post production. Whether working in the studio or on a remote production, Butcher Bird relies on flexible signal routing, low-latency I/O, and redundancy delivered by AJA solutions.
Managing signal flow
With such a diverse project slate, Butcher Bird spends a lot of time building and testing new workflows. Their operation requires the flexibility to send and receive video signals across the facility from the stage to green rooms, offices, creative suites, and beyond. To streamline signal flow, especially for its stage ceiling grid with monitors, the team leverages AJA KUMO 12G-SDI and 3G-SDI Routers, including one KUMO 3232-12G, one KUMO 1616-12G, and one KUMO 1616 (3G-SDI). The setup ensures producers, talent, and crew can monitor shoots without having to crowd around a single screen.
“KUMO routers are a natural fit for what we do. They’re fast, dependable, and easy to operate. Their web UI is great for keeping signals organized,” explained Technical Director Brian Druckman. “The hardware strikes the right balance between industrial - working no matter what - and being easy to use. It also introduces very little latency, which keeps everything feeling responsive for operators, talent, and audiences.”
For redundancy, Butcher Bird relies heavily on pre-saved routing tables known as salvos. It runs primary and backup vMix systems for every project, so if the main system fails, salvos let the team instantly re-route the backup to the right destination. “KUMO salvos are super simple to set and forget,” Druckman added. “Once configured, we can trust our backup will work, which gives us peace of mind.”
In addition to KUMO, Butcher Bird often brings an AJA Io 4K Plus on remote projects to support external Thunderbolt I/O for encoding setups. It allows them to keep their footprint small by using laptops or compact systems running OBS or vMix, rather than large workstations. Druckman has found Io 4K Plus useful when the team needs to add just one or two extra inputs, and it often serves as their I/O for final encoding and delivery.
Reducing project complexity
Maintaining signal path integrity proved mission-critical for a recent multi-camera green screen virtual production shoot with live compositing. The Butcher Bird team employed a three-camera 4K workflow and positioned monitors around the stage to allow the actors to see live views of the performance with the composited imagery so they could react in real time. It required precise coordination across the stage. Every signal – from camera ISOs to composited outputs and isolated backgrounds – had to be routed through to monitors, other displays, and recorders across the studio, for which Butcher Bird deployed AJA KUMO 3232-12G routers.
“The KUMOs were clutch for us on this project. They allowed us to maintain a seamless, low-latency production environment, even as we sent the composited feeds to the monitors and recorders,” Druckman noted. “Without the flexibility and reliability of KUMO, this workflow would have been challenging to execute. AJA gear lets us keep all our signals organized both in-studio and while working remotely.”
Marching forward
In the future, Butcher Bird plans to expand its virtual, live, and immersive capabilities. As it does, incorporating emerging remote production and AI technologies into its studio and remote pipelines will prove a central focus. Regardless of the new technologies and techniques it adopts, Druckman will continue to depend on AJA technology to provide the video routing and I/O stability that the studio’s technically ambitious projects demand.
