While seeing your favorite band live is undeniably the best way to experience a music event such as FADER FORT presented by Converse – watching the live stream in the comfort of your living room is a great second best!
Thanks to a creative collaboration between FADER, Dell and Intel, people all over the world experienced some of the hottest musical acts in the nation in downtown Austin last week. Powerful technology from Dell and Intel made it possible – something @cunningevan tweeted was “the only good SXSW brand integration.”
The 2014 FADER FORT kicked off last Tuesday with a Preview Party hosted by Dell featuring a surprise appearance by P. Diddy and continued through the weekend with live performances from artists ranging from Charli XCX to Snoop Dogg to Julian Casablancas. All performances were streamed live worldwide, and visitors to the FADER FORT had the opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at the technology that made this all possible, via the Dell | Intel Live Stream Pod onsite.
The livestream process begins with microphones capturing sound from the stage, which is then channeled through an Allen & Heath MixRack and iLive audio console. The signal is processed by a Waves SoundGrid® platform controlled by a Dell Precision M4800 mobile workstation.
Two Dell Precision T5610 tower workstations with dual 12-core 2.7GHz Intel® Xeon® E5-2697v2 processors capture all channels of audio and the final mix is sent from the audio console to the NewTek Tricaster 850 (using the TCXD850CS control surface), where it is married with the video signal coming from the cameras onstage. Finally, the content is then sent to two Dell Precision M6800 mobile workstations, featuring 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Extreme Edition processors, where it is encoded to a web-friendly format which becomes the final content for the live stream. Additionally, the Dell Precision workstations are used for audio/video capture, encoding and building the editorial footage of the live stream.
As more people rely on the web to experience everything from concerts to classes, the competition to create the best virtual audience experience is growing, and The FADER turned to Dell for the company’s established expertise in audio engineering and video editing, including successful live streaming of music festivals like Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and Jazzfest. With Dell Precision and Intel Xeon technology, media and entertainment professionals are able to create and edit digital content faster and more reliably than ever before.
Check out the exclusive video below for an inside look at the excitement from FADER FORT over the past week. Austin Business Journal also provides a great overview of Dell’s FADER FORT Preview Party and VizWorld does a good job of summarizing the technology solutions that were showcased onsite.