Evolve Technology‘s Evolve CX is a technology laboratory aimed at education and training specifically for the virtual production market, where professionals can gain valuable hands-on experience and creative studios can develop and demo content for their clients. The Evolve CX team, led by Brian Macauto, Director of Technology for Virtual Production, opted to equip the space with Brompton LED video processors.
“Brompton is very respected in the virtual production industry for its friendly user interface and flexible features for things like colour correction control and tuning the LED wall settings specifically to the camera,” explained Macauto. “Compared to other processing options, Brompton is just the best of the best, and that’s what this industry wants to use.”
The Evolve CX virtual production volume is equipped with Studio 1.9 LED panels at 7,680 x 2,048 resolution, driven by two Brompton SX40 LED video processors and six Brompton XD data distribution units. It also has Unreal Engine, Pixera, and disguise media servers to feed content to the wall, Mo-sys and Stipe camera tracking, and a Sony Venice camera. Brompton’s LED video processors enable users to test a number of different workflow scenarios with ease.
“In order to effectively evaluate LED technology, you have to explore a lot of different types of settings that are available, such as frame rates and bit depths and brightness settings. Brompton has been helpful because it’s able to support all different types of incoming video signals, plus it comes with advanced feature sets that allow us to augment things like shutter angle, frame multipliers, or colour control. This all helps us play with what the LED looks like on camera, which is key, because it can look very different from how it looks to your eye,” Macauto shared.
Brompton’s features such as 3D LUT import and ShutterSync have been of particular interest to Macauto. 3D LUT augments Brompton’s standard colour management features by letting advanced users create their own 3D LUT and import it directly into the Tessera LED processor, thereby integrating the LED wall into the colour management workflow rather than matching manually. ShutterSync for the first time lets filmmakers tune the LED refresh to the camera, rather than the other way around, giving creative control back to the filmmaker.
“3D LUT is interesting to me because typically LUTs are handled on the content side and then once it gets to the LED wall, we have to manually adjust the settings to make it look as close as possible to the initial creative intent. ShutterSync is also a great feature because it reduces visual artefacts and lets the creative team choose its desired camera configuration first, rather than having to tailor it to what the wall can handle. These are some of the capabilities that really set Brompton apart,” concluded Macauto.
As demand for virtual production continues to rise, Evolve CX is a valuable resource for Atlanta’s booming production industry. To learn more about Evolve CX, please visit: www.evolvetechnology.live/virtual-production
