While what happened onstage at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC) made headlines worldwide, Analog Way’s Aquilon RS6 worked seamlessly behind the scenes to drive the massive LED video screens enhancing the four-day production.
Jason Rudolph, a Screens Producer with Aeon Point, which conceptualises, designs and produces engaging experiences spanning live events, digital, and broadcast, was tasked with controlling and operating all of the convention’s screens in Chicago’s United Center.
Rudolph has played a key role in many of the world’s most iconic events including Super Bowl halftime shows, the Oscars, the Tony Awards, the iHeart Music Festival, the NFL Draft and Kennedy Center Honors, earning him three Emmy Awards and 13 nominations.
For the DNC, Rudolph worked with Executive Producer Ricky Kirshner of Kirshner Events, Director Glenn Weiss, Production Designer Bruce Rodgers of Tribe Design, and content creators Possible Productions.
He selected Analog Way’s Aquilon RS6 to drive the screens, having previously used Analog Way systems for Super Bowl halftime shows and the Oscars broadcast.
The Aquilon RS6 is a 4K/8K/16K multi-screen presentation system and videowall processor. It features 32 4K inputs and 20 4K outputs, unmatched real-time 10/12-bit 4:4:4 video processing power and pure 4K60p on each input and output with ultra-low latency.
“We were delighted that Jason chose to work with Analog Way equipment again on another extremely high-profile event,” said Jay Gonzalez, Analog Way’s President of the Americas.
“We’re so pleased that he is confident that Analog Way will deliver for him at mission-critical live events seen by viewers around the world.”
For the DNC Rudolph needed to control eight 4K destinations: six 4K feeds to the giant wall backdrop; one 4K feed to the larger wings extending from the wall at stage left and stage right; and another 4K feed for the venue’s outputs to ribbons and the centre scoreboard.
The content was a mix of graphics from servers, pre-produced video packages from the truck, IMAG and other outside material.
“We were on the edge of input capacity for the Analog Way RS4, which I had used before, so I reached out to Analog Way, and they offered their newest and largest Aquilon RS6 system,” Rudolph reported.
Fuse Technical Group provided two RS6 units for the DNC, which Rudolph ran as main and backup systems for full redundancy.
“I really like the Analog Way platform,” Rudolph said. “It offers some unique approaches to doing things, such as more flexibility for how we like to map things out, colour correction tools that are very good and useful on the input and output sides and being natively all 4K.
“I also like its very low latency and how the system documents the latency of different things you want to do – you can calculate the latency and don’t have to make a guess.”
“Analog Way’s support was also very responsive. They gave us very prompt replies to any questions we had about a system we were using for the first time.”
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