Green Hippo Receives Top Marks

The American University in the Emirates (AUE) has held its 7th commencement ceremony at Dubai World Trade Centre, with dignitaries in attendance including His Excellency Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, United Arab Emirates Cabinet Member, Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development. The AUE invited Dubai-based Fountains International Events to craft a video and lighting show befitting the prestigious event.

Led by Pavel Pashkovskiy, Fountains International Events has extensive experience in the region. For the AUE graduation ceremony the company designed and produced content with a total size of approximately 10,000 x 4,000 pixels. Using a pair of Hippotizer Karst Media Servers, Pashkovskiy operated a special Art-Net timeline-based controller from Syncronorm, sending layers and starting triggers to the Karsts. Pashkovskiy calls this technique ‘Art-Net timecode’ and the Art-Net timeline triggered all of his other devices, including lasers, light controllers, Special FX and water fountains.

Each Karst ran a separate screen area, offering blending as well as hardedge joining. The Hippotizer Karsts received an externally-sourced live feed via Datapath capture cards and 8 splitters – 4 from Datapath and 4 from FX – spliced the Hippotizer 2K and 4K outputs. The signal was then sent to video projectors through fibre optics.

Fountains International Events managed installation, projection works, show creation and synchronisation and the Green Hippo tech delivered exactly what it needed for the multifaceted show. At only 2 rack units high, the Hippotizer Karst is remarkably compact for such a comprehensively equipped machine. It’s super flexible, too, offering a host customisable and capture options.

Pashkovskiy concluded: “We are always creating complex shows, where too many components are involved! Green Hippo guarantees the flexibility required to enable us to successfully deliver these live events. Hippotizer Media Servers also give amazing system stability in very difficult pre-programmed shows, where we require powerful eternal control.”