Hippotizer Continues Its Run on X-Factor

Green Hippo provided the elaborate visual display and live footage for the UK-based talent competition television series The X-Factor's 2010 edition.

X-Factor's lighting programmer, William Peachment from, Little Mouse Productions, has once again integrated several of the company's Hippotizer media servers into this year's X-Factor set up, working with four Hippotizer systems and using a total of seven outputs.

All machines were networked via HippoNet and controlled remotely by Green Hippo's ZooKeeper control software. The individual monitors on each machine allowed the operator, Russ Grujbiak, to easily see and access all outputs.

Using one Hippotizer HD, one HippoCritter, and two Hippotizer Stages, Peachment controlled all video and digital lighting via these four systems.

The Hippotizer HD fed the center screen from one output and the side screens from the second output, with these screens going via a scan converter to the vision mixer so that they could be switched. The HippoCritter, with its one output, was used to drive the two Olite towers either side of the stage. One Hippotizer Stage handled the Barco MiStrips in the floor and ceiling of the stage, while the other took care of the plasma screen and the Mistrips on the side of the stage. Both the HippoCritter and Hippotizer Stages fed their outputs directly via fiber DVI to the controllers for the various elements.

A Compulite Vector console controlled all the Hippotizer media servers via DMX; an extra PC ran ZooKeeper so the content creator could upload his work to the network, which was all custom-produced specifically for the show. Peachment says, "We use the Hippotizers as they give us the flexibility to create outstanding visuals on our shows on a very reliable hardware platform. The technical support is second to none and dealing with Green Hippo is always a pleasure."