Starting with the Dolby Cinema Network (which allows numerous Soho facilities to colour-grade remotely in the Eclipse projector theatre in Soho Square – still in use currently) most of the Barnfind installs have been either post production facilities wanting to extract their equipment to commercial data centres or football clubs (Arsenal and Chelsea amongst the Premiership) who have large pitches and want to economise on their structured fibre estate. All of these clients appreciate the lack of problems associated with IP signal transport – latency, cost and security as well as electrical efficiency.

Over the last year it has become clear that the UK touring-show/theatre/events-hire industry (traditionally very “broadcast adjacent” but not quite like film and TV) has started to discover the benefits of Barnfind’s fibre products for multiplexing and signal transport. Additionally large LED screens are starting to require higher-than-4K resolutions and whether it’s SDi or HDMI Barnfind fill the space above 12Gbit/sec.

Colour Sound Experiment are based in London, Jeddah and Los Angeles. Tom Chaney runs their Video Systems & Development department.

“At Colour Sound we have been successfully deploying the BarnColor systems to provide us with bi-directional 12G-SDI signal paths. The system has been invaluable to reduce fibre infrastructure where multiple signals are need, for example at both Front of House and Video Control or in other remote locations. Since we regularly need to provide ISO camera and switcher feeds in remote locations away from the PPU and video control a multiplexing system is a necessity. The BarnColor offers this in an incredibly easy to operate form without the need for additional networking and software knowledge. This broadens the pool of site technicians who can be utilised to set-up and use the system. In addition to the 12G-SDI units the availability of SFP based units which can also  be used in the cascaded system allows us to send up to 10Gb control and other IP data between systems. The uses vary from wired internet to LED, Artnet, KVM, matrix or remote switcher control desks. Our 2-rack systems have seen the inclusion of additional Matrix I/O and monitoring which expands the flexibility and assists with validating signal paths. Whilst our systems comprise of 2-racks we can easily link multiple systems together via a short patch between the Matrix I/O panels.”

James Paul is Head of Video at Stage Sound Services

“Blue-i Theatre Technology and Stage Sound Services recently worked very closely with Dan Trenchard and his system design for the new Andrew Lloyd Webbers Starlight Express theatre production and supplied a BTF1-02 infrastructure for multiple signal distributions of camera and projector feeds, which has been a great success.

We are finding more and more shows in the theatre sector (both new and legacy) are wanting a reliable, cost effective way of sending several feeds to multiple locations and believe BarnFind is a great way of meeting these demands.

The BarnFind team are always there with advice and technical support for whatever weird and wonderful demands our industry throws at us.”

Dan Trenchard continues;

“The built in signal analysers allowed us to diagnose termination issues during the installation and being able to see the optical loss levels was a great early warning system for fibre faults.

We also used the SNMP features to report signal drops to our network monitoring system, giving operators an immediate and continuous log of LOS alarms.”