Sphere’s interior boasts a 160,000-square-foot, 16K wraparound LED canvas with 256 million rendered pixels — the largest and highest resolution LED screen in the world. For U2’s “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live” residency at Sphere, the band’s content development team called on Fuse to develop a video playback system capable of handling 16K resolution and augmenting and moving live input across 16K — all over IP, running on a complete SMPTE ST 2110 backbone.

“It took five years to build the Sphere, but we had only five months from the initial contact to deliver a 100% reliable solution in time for the first show — using a standard and workflow we weren’t accustomed to. It was definitely no small feat to do something like that in such a compressed timeline,” said Ryan Middlemiss, Fuse Technical Group’s director of media servers.

Fuse was able to realize the vision it had for the workflow — which in turn made it possible to bring the spectacle to life — thanks to the capability and performance of Matrox Video’s IP video products, coupled with its support and SMPTE ST 2110 expertise. Critical products in the workflow are:

• Matrox ConvertIP for SMTPE ST 2110 Conversion — Fuse deployed 23 Matrox ConvertIP DSS dual-channel SFP SDI-to-IP devices to convert high-resolution SDI from the media servers into SMPTE ST 2110 and deliver content to the IP video backbone for display on the LEDs. Fuse selected ConvertIP for its 12G SDI and 4K (DCI) support, its low latency, and its 25G speeds. Fuse subsequently requested 6G support, and Matrox Video added the capability to ConvertIP.
• Matrox ConductIP for Routing and Orchestration — Fuse uses Matrox ConductIP to route and orchestrate SMPTE ST 2110 sources on its internal network, a critical part of the workflow.
• Matrox Extio 3 for Remote Operation and Control — The production system uses 30 computers, with one programmer and two technicians in the control room handling all the video for the show. Fuse deployed Matrox Extio 3 IP KVM extenders so the operators can access multiple computers from one remote workstation with one keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Users can move between Extio 3-equipped computers at once just by dragging the mouse.

Additional Matrox Video core technology powers other systems in the Sphere SMPTE ST 2110 workflow.