Hippotizer continues its successful run on X-Factor – UK 2010

19 January 2011 11:37 GMT

Matt Cardle has made it – he is the winner of last year’s X-Factor season – and his single reigned as the 2010 Christmas number 1.

For Green Hippo the excitement of the show is less about its contestants and more about the elaborate and stunning visual display and live footage that millions of viewers have watched for hours over the last 17 weeks of 2010.

X-Factor’s Lighting programmer William Peachment from Little Mouse Productions has once again integrated several Hippotizer media servers into this year’s X-Factor set up, working with 4 Hippotizer systems and using a total of 7 outputs.

All machines were networked via HippoNet and controlled remotely by Green Hippo’s ZooKeeper control software. The individual monitors on each machine allowed the Operator, Russ Grujbiak, to easily see and access all outputs.

Using 1 Hippotizer HD, 1 HippoCritter and 2 Hippotizer Stages, Bill controlled all video and digital lighting via these four systems.

The Hippotizer HD fed the centre screen from one output and the side screens from the second output, with these screens going via a scan converter to the vision mixer so that they can be switched. The HippoCritter with its one output was used to drive the two Olite Towers either side of the stage. And out of the two Hippotizer Stages one did the MiStrips in the floor and ceiling of the stage, while the other one took care of the Plasma screen and the Mistrips on the side of the stage. Both the HippoCritter and the two Hippotizer Stages fed their outputs directly via Fiber DVI to the controllers for the various elements.

A Compulite Vector console controlled all the Hippotizer media servers via DMX, and there was an extra PC running ZooKeeper so that the content creator could upload his work to the network, which was all bespoke content produced specifically for the show.

Bill comments that: “We use the Hippotizers as they give us the flexibility to create outstanding visuals on our shows on a very reliable hardware platform. The technical support is second to none and dealing with Green Hippo is always a pleasure.”

So, it looks like this was a complete success all around for the show and Matt Cardle as well as Bill Peachment whose work with Hippotizer continues to go from strength to strength. For more details please visit www.littlemouseproductions.co.uk