Austin’s High End Systems Creates Olympic Gold For Opening Ceremonies
Unless you have had your head in the sand for the last week you have seen, or at least heard about, the spectacular Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympics. The extraordinary celebration of Chinese history has been applauded around the world or its originality, creativity, technological achievement and pure beauty.
The Chinese set out to ‘WOW” to world and ‘WOW’ the world they did. The success of this extravaganza was due, in part, to the control technology for the massive display of video effects, provided by Austin-based High End Systems, Inc."It was pretty much a jaw-dropping response from entertainment people around the world," said Scott Blair, High End’s project manager for digital lighting. "Everyone was amazed by how it turned out, by the scale of it and the quality of it."
In an interview with Statesman.com, Scott Blair explained that High End supplied 120 networked video servers, plus the most recent version of its Axon Media Server video software, along with six control consoles to run the massive video displays on screens along the rim of the stadium, on a central globe and at ground level.
The main video screen that encircled the stadium was the largest video projection surface in the world, Blair said: nearly 1,950 feet long and about 45 feet high.
Blair said the company needed to employ its most advanced software to seamlessly synchronize the video images coming from the 120 servers that drove 150 digital light projectors in the stadium. Each server and control console was linked to projectors around the stadium with many miles of high-speed fiber-optic cable to handle the enormous flows of digital video data.
All the video had to be synchronized to the split second so there was no noticeable jitter between the various images that were projected together.
High End is no stranger to big shows. It has supplied advanced lighting and video systems for major rock tours and events including the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, and the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy.
High End Systems, employing more than 150 people around the world, was started in 1972 as Blackstone Productions. It was sold in June for $55 million to Barco, an international technology company based in Kortrijk, Belgium.
"We have done a lot of large events, but this was the largest video-based event that we have done," Blair said. "It was a phenomenally creative show, and it was on a massive scale. It had a lot of unique challenges. We were pleased with how it turned out. Everyone here feels great about a job well done."
High End Systems brought home the gold!
Image courtesy of Getty Images, Telegraph TV
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Tags: 2008 olympics, austin, beijing opening ceremony, high end, technology
August 21st, 2008 at 8:27 am
Thats very cool, the opening ceremonies were great and its fun to know a local company developed a lot of it. In Tucson AZ we also have a lot of high tech companies etc. In fact the rover that is on MARs right now is being controled and was developed mostly here in Tucson.
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August 25th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Thanks for this! Wish the major news station would have published something to give High End credit for the work they did. It is hard hearing all the glory given to China when you know a US company did this.
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