House of Dancing Water attraction renews with AV Stumpfl media servers

The integrator Cosmo Pro AV has selected the technology of this Austrian manufacturer for the project of updating this emblematic theater of Macau, in which the largest aquatic-acrobatic show in the world is held.

The House of dancing water is an impressive water show, created by Franco Dragone Entertainment Group, for the leisure and entertainment complex of the so-called City of Dreams, located in the Chinese administrative region of Macau (Macau's city of dreams).

This spectacular world-renowned aquatic and acrobatic production features an avant-garde stage, with a large pool containing enough water to fill five Olympians, while on the ceiling there is a unique chandelier, big enough to support dozens of dancers.

With this avant-garde staging, an epic love story and a spectacular journey through time are interpreted., in which dazzling costumes are exhibited, special effects and actions never seen in a theater.

After nine years of continued success, this award-winning show needed a system upgrade in its main space. In addition, and in order to improve the overall experience of the public, its owners also decided it was time to improve the main lobby projection system to provide visitors with a more informative and engaging visual experience..

The local integrator Cosmo Pro AV was selected for this project, as Jason Yeung explains, one of those responsible for this project: "the old projection setup was manually aligned with a hardware-based soft edge mixing system. They wanted to improve and update the system to have more flexibility in terms of content playback and image quality.. In addition, traditional projectors, lamp-based, they were obsolete and creating an unbalanced projection canvas".

For this particular application, Yeung and his Cosmo Pro AV team decided that the projectors of Digital Projection were the best option and would be better controlled by the latest models of Pixera media servers AV Stumpfl, offering different configurations, such as live input and camera-based calibration, especially suitable for improving the adjustability of the updated system.

As Yeung explains, "The 3D preview capabilities of Pixera servers allowed us to test video content before deploying it and uploading it to the system.. As system integrators, calibration software based on a single camera Vioso made it very easy to adjust the four projectors of Digital Projection M-Vision Laser 18K".

Like this, the areas where the projections overlap "are almost perfect, and our technicians even had the flexibility to manually adjust their curves to further enhance the projection canvas.", Yeung points out

Pixera's built-in Avio integration was used to control projectors using TCP/IP commands, as well as to synchronize the program with the daily operations and calendar of events of the House of Dancing Water performances. The servers have also been configured with an audio interface to allow playback in the BGM system of the theater lobby..

"The process of integrating Av Stumpfl technology into the facility was relatively easy," Yeung recalls.. We take advantage of Vioso's projection calculations and calibration tools integrated in Pixera. When you predefine the projector model and lens, along with the projection distances in the database, we do most of the pre-programming work on a laptop using Pixera Director.”

One of the challenges for the Cosmo Pro AV team was finding the optimal position of the calibration chamber., as a wide-angle lens was used to capture the entire projection image, of 32 meters wide, and some distortion was inevitable.

"We were surprised at how well the system handled this image distortion," Yeung said.. There were no major problems, which allowed us to create a seamless projection canvas in a matter of ten to fifteen minutes".

The rest of the installation followed this pattern, according to Yeung, with the other key element – M-Vision Laser 18K digital projection projectors – which also require minimal maintenance, according to the general summary of the project.

"One of the key advantages we had in this work was Pixera's ability to be used in design., integration and final result of the project. It was a solution from start to finish. Its preview also played an important role in the development of the project., as it helped to present the assembly of the projection in a very professional way, but easily understandable", concludes Yeung.

The technological renovations that those responsible for The House of dancing have carried out in recent years, such as the lighting system (more data in this link) and intercom have been collected in Digital AV.

Other articles on AV Stumpfl, City of dreams Macau, Cosmo Pro AV, Digital Projection, Franco Dragone Entertainment, The House of dancing water, Vioso, Vioso Projection Software