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“AMERICAN IDIOT: THE MUSICAL”“American Idiot: The Musical” Touring show relies on Grass Valley for video conversion

CASE STUDY

CUSTOMER

“American Idiot: The Musical”

americanidiotthemusical.com

CHALLENGE

Feed 40 HD-SDI video sources placed throughout the set from DVI sources.

SOLUTION

ADVC G1 signal converters from Grass Valley

BENEFITS

Cost-effective and reliable signal conversion with a small (1/3 RU) form factor

BACKGROUND

Following a hugely successful two Tony Award® run on Broadway, an additional Best Musical Tony® nomination, and a Grammy® Award for Best Musical Show Album in 2011, the rock musical “American Idiot” is now on a worldwide tour that will bring the excitement and great music of the punk rock band Green Day and its 2004 Grammy Award-winning multi-platinum album, “American Idiot” to a theater near you.

The Broadway show closed on April 24, 2011 after 422 performances and a touring production that began in December in Toronto, Canada, is now staging two performances in two different cities per week.

The touring show and its producer Ira Pittleman (Work Light Productions) have a lot to live up to. “American Idiot: The Musical” won two 2010 Tony Awards, one for Best Scenic Design of a Musical (Christine Jones) and another for Best Lighting Design of a Musical (Kevin Adams). Mimicking the original Broadway

set—complete with TV screens that flash incessant messages—the production team is traveling with a highly portable stage show that is set up in about six hours prior to show time at each venue.

SOLUTION

The show features 37 flat panel HD screens and three projectors placed throughout the set (video and projection designed by Darrel Maloney), of all different sizes, that are fed by 46 compact (1/3 RU form factor) ADVC® G1 signal converters from Grass Valley™. The converters are mounted in a doublewide rack unit, on wheels for easy portability.

The touring company rented all of the video display equipment used on stage during each performance from WorldStage (formerly Scharff Weisberg), a full-service rental and AV staging company based in New York. In 2007, Scharff Weisberg and Video Applications (based in Southern California) merged and created a new organization that offers a larger spectrum of services while maintaining its legacy principles of

customer service and the highest quality technology.

“For the touring show, we wanted to put together a package that was easily transportable from city to city but it also had to be rock solid reliable and easy to maintain,” said Barry Grossman, chief engineer at WorldStage. “HD-SDI was the best solution for this tour and the use of the Grass Valley converters ensured that the image quality was superb.”

All of the screens and the projector are fed by a series of media servers (United Visual Artists’ d3) that output a signal into the Grass Valley ADVC G1 signal converters and then on to a video matrix switch that sends the signal to the desired display on stage. The ADVC G1 units convert the signals from DVI to HD-SDI to maintain the highest quality on stage. And they have stood up to the rigors of a traveling stage show.

BENEFITS

“The Grass Valley converters have held

CASE STUDY

With a rich history serving the broadcast and professional video industries, the Grass Valley name is synonymous with innovation, leadership, and performance. With a full range of products and services supporting many of the world’s most high-profile live events, Grass Valley offers the most comprehensive portfolio of software, services and IT infrastructure. Customers deploying Grass Valley solutions include most of the world’s leading broadcast and teleproduction IT facilities, independent video professionals, as well

as emerging content creators and distributors providers of broadband, telecommunications, and transmission services. When you’re watching news, sports, or entertainment programming, whether on a TV, the web, or a mobile phone, you’re watching Grass Valley at work in the connected world.

For information about Grass Valley products, please visit www.grassvalley.com.

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up very well throughout the tour,” said Grossman. “We chose them because they are compact in size, which allows us to get more than 40 ADVC G1 signal converters in two racks. For us as a rental house, these converters are cost-effective to use and they have the Grass Valley name on them, which tell us they are made well and will last us a long time. We’re very selective about what we offer in our inventory and recognize that Grass Valley is synonymous with high quality images and reliability. That’s why we recommend them to our

customers whenever the application is right.”

The Grass Valley ADVC G1 is designed to convert and/or upconvert video signals to HD/SD-SDI. The unit will convert and/or upconvert sources from HDMI, DVI, component, composite, S-Video, AES/EBU, and analog to HD/SD-SDI (3G/1.5G support). The ADVC G1 can also be used as an audio embedder. It features a Reference In port that can serve as a frame synchronizer for analog inputs. This eliminates the need to purchase separate expensive equipment.

Like its Broadway predecessor, thus far the “American Idiot” touring show has received rave reviews in every city it has stopped. The tour will finish its US domestic run in July, and is then headed for a multi-city tour across Europe for the remainder of 2012. The same Grass Valley ADVC G1 signal converters will wow audiences everywhere they go, each and every night

“These converters are cost-effective to use and they have the Grass Valley name on them, which tell us they are made well and will last us a long time.”Barry Grossman, Chief Engineer, WorldStage www.worldstage.com