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The famous American rock band, Eagles, selected Medialon to go with them on their “Long
Road Out Of Eden” World Tour.
Medialon Manager has been specified by Nocturne
Productions, one of the biggest
live
show production companies in the USA. The English-based
Medialon programming specialist Automation 4 Ltd joined
the production team to assist in programming the
Medialon show control system for the Eagles Tour.
The mission was “to produce a robust show control
solution and a graphical user interface that would be
used by the assistant director to trigger the replay of
six streams of HD Video that would be projected on a
huge backdrop behind the band” said David Birchall,
Technical Director of Automation 4 Ltd.
The Show Control system used on stage included a
Medialon Show Control Machine running one Medialon
Manager PRO software license.
In order to allow the
band to play all tracks synchronous and to keep all
elements of the show synchronized including lighting,
audio and video, a Pro-Tools system has been installed.
Medialon was provided with a time code feed from
Pro-Tools, used as the master sync source for the show
timelines used to trigger the HD video on 6x Doremi
Nuggets HD video players. Medialon Manager was also used
to change the video mask effects from 2x Vista Spyder
video processors.
During producing the system, several challenges had to
be overcome…
Firstly the Eagles would regularly change from playing
along to the Pro-Tools backing to playing totally
improvised solo sections. In this situation the Medialon
system would stop receiving the time code track
temporarily. Then, during the improvised sections the
Assistant director would need to manually trigger video
replay and effects from a number of buttons programmed
on the Medialon Manager GUI. On receiving the signal
from the band Medialon Manager PRO was then re-enabled
to accept incoming time code and the video show would
automatically re-synchronies with the band.
Secondly the High Definition media used was being
tweaked and changed right up to a few hours before the
start of the show on the opening night. This meant that
the start 'in-points' and ending 'out-points' of the
video and the durations of the clips where being
regularly changed.
“To overcome this and in-order to minimize the need for
re-programming of the system when new media was added,
we utilized the flexibility of the Medialon system and
created a small database of clip names, durations,
in-points and out-points all fully editable from the
GUI” said David Birchall from Automation 4 Ltd.
“This meant that if the media was re-edited the
production team would just need to change the
appropriate editable fields on the GUI [e.g. file name,
in-point etc] and then load the media on to the Nugget
players. From there the coding behind the scenes would
ensure that the timelines were automatically adjusted to
accept the new media with no danger of the show control
code being affected”, he added.
“This approach dramatically shortened the time required
to update the media and left the production team
confident that the media could be loaded right at the
last minute in the knowledge that the show would go
on!”, concluded David Birchall.
“The flexibility of the Medialon system and the future
proofed and robust coding by Automation 4 has proved to
be a successful partnership for Nocturne Productions and
The Eagles”, declared David Birchall.
The show is still on the road using the same Medialon
interface. “Minor reprogramming has been necessary by
Nocturne Productions to keep the show up to date, as the
live show has developed on its journey around the world,
but has worked seamlessly due to the flexibility
of Medialon as well as the way it was programmed”, said
Gene McAuliffe, Assistant Video Director of Nocturne
Productions.
“It was great working with David Birchall on this
project. He was an enormous help in working out the
details of this show. I am glad I got the chance to work
with him and learn from his expertise”, concluded Gene
McAuliffe.
Nocturne Productions
Video Director: David V. Neugebauer
Assistant Video Director: Gene McAuliffe
Automation 4 Limited
Technical Director: David Birchall |
