Life is Beautiful is a three-day music and lifestyle festival in downtown Las Vegas from October 24-26 taking place over 21 city blocks. Performing at the festival are 67 musical acts that range from the Foo Fighters to Lionel Ritchie, Kanye West and many more. In order to facilitate Internet broadcasts of the performances, event sponsors hired Nashville-based Camp Digital as the on-site video production company. Camp Digital has extensive experience in live event production, and along with a vast team mobilized for the event, is capturing 500+ hours of content using file-based HD/SD recording devices from AJA Video Systems’ Ki Pro family.

 

Workflow

“We decided early on that Ki Pro would be the recording medium for all of the stages and trucks, and we have over 40 Ki Pros on site working the event,” explained Tom Gregory, co-founder, Camp Digital. “We were early adopters of the first Ki Pro when we moved to a non-tape environment and more recently installed 16 Ki Pro Racks into our mobile truck. In addition to all of the workflow benefits, they’re huge space savers.”

Camp Digital assembled a crew of 97 people to work the festival that includes technical directors, camera operators, audio specialists, directors, motion graphics artists, editors, broadcast engineers and more. Camp Digital is bringing together several mobile broadcast truck vendors to collaborate on this project including: High End TV, NEP, CVM Productions and Video One Productions, all bringing crews and engineers along for the ride. 

“We started doing multi-cam on tape in 2006 and regardless of format, every one of our clients was editing in ProRes or DNxHD codecs—and at the time, that required the added step of capturing tape footage at a post facility—significantly increasing costs and turnaround time,” continued Adam Mills, owner, High End TV.

“With the Ki Pro recorders, we cut out hours of capturing tape since they record to the native NLE codec, and as a result we’re getting better quality images and saving a ton of time and money.” Mills also uses AJA KUMO routers feeding the monitor wall and all point-to-point routing on his mobile production truck. 

Across the five mobile trucks and multiple crews, there will also be hundreds of AJA Mini-Converters in use, everything from Hi5 HD-SDI to HDMI video and audio converters to HD5DA distribution amplifiers. Using AJA’s FiDO SDI/Optical Fiber Mini-Converters, all of the trucks will be interconnected via 14,000+ feet of single mode fiber moving signals around the festival and getting it back to the master control location. 

“Much of the work that we do these days is for live streaming, and those clients don’t treat the production quality any different than something that’s being delivered through traditional broadcast channels,” said Gregory. “AJA products deliver the quality that our clients demand, plus they’re bulletproof and made to be used over and over again. Not only do they withstand the rigors of bouncing up and down on the road—everything from the Ki Stor drives to the FS1 and Mini-Converters are also made to be plugged and unplugged hundreds of times without failing.”

“On the rare occasion that some piece of gear breaks down, my experience with AJA support is the best by far over any other professional video equipment vendor,” added Mills. “If I call AJA with an issue when I’m in the middle of a show, they send me a refurbished unit the next day. By comparison, a similar experience with an AJA competitor pointed me to an 800 number, which led me to an online forum, and over a month of back and forth to finally get a repair. When you’re in the heat of production, and equipment failure isn’t an option, you want to work with a vendor who has your back—and if there ever is a problem, AJA is there,” added Mills.

Content from Life Is Beautiful will be broadcast from 8-10PM PST on, October 24^th, 25^th and 26^th, available as a free live stream. Be sure to tune in for performances from amazing acts such as Foo Fighters, Skrillex, Broken Bells, Arctic Monkeys, Panic at the Disco, Flaming Lips and many, many more. 

About AJA Video Systems, Inc.

Since 1993, AJA Video has been a leading manufacturer of video interface and conversion solutions, bringing high-quality, cost-effective digital video products to the professional, broadcast and post-production markets. AJA products are designed and manufactured at our facilities in Grass Valley, California, and sold through an extensive sales channel of resellers and systems integrators around the world. For further information, please see our website at www.aja.com. 

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