Many of those working in the Lighting Production industry may only know “Stumpfl” as a name overheard in the AV aisles of the warehouse. However, anyone worth their weight in lumens that’s been involved in projection will know the Austrian company that bares this family name only too well. For more than 40 years AV Stumpfl has grown into a world leader in the manufacture of projection screens and surfaces. In addition to screens, AV Stumpfl has also manufactured for many years a full line of Media Servers known as Wings, and a Show Control and Integration suite of products named ‘AVIO’. Whilst Wings servers may have only seen minor use in production in this part of the world they are quite popular within the installation market worldwide.
A few years ago AV Stumpfl set about creating an entirely new Media Server platform and brought a highly experienced and accomplished group of people into the fold to lead that journey.
The result of that initiative is Pixera, a highly innovative, flexible and at its core, powerful, platform for media experience execution. I choose to describe Pixera in this way because it is much more than simply a Media Server, and much more than a single product, with a single purpose.
While it’s no secret that I work for the company that distributes AV Stumpfl in Australia, I would very much like to think that the many years of prior experience I have in dealing with multiple media server and software platforms in active development, as well as the folks that create them, will shine brighter than any perceived biases.
Visiting the beautiful small town of Wallern in Austria where AV Stumpfl is based, I was delighted to meet the passionate team behind the development of Pixera. One conversation certainly resonated with me immediately. When speaking with the head of the development team, they used the phrase “User Experience” and stated how it was of the utmost importance. Now if anyone reading this has ever dealt with the ‘propeller heads’ that actually create the software tools we use every day, you will know how rare it is for them to talk about user experience, and even rarer to have it be placed higher on the importance ladder than words like ‘performance’, ‘features’ and ‘power’.
When you open up the Pixera software, the first thing you will notice is the result of that focus on the user experience. Like me, you will likely be shocked at the simplicity of the interface, in fact almost too simple. I would argue that the interface is almost too simple for its own good; anyone used to the complex user interfaces of most modern Media Creation and Playback products will quite likely find themselves lost, muttering ‘where are all the buttons?’ under their breath. I’d dare imagine quite a few people have heard or seen a little of Pixera by now and haven’t given it much of a second glance for the sole reason that it looks too simple to do anything of merit…and I wouldn’t blame them. We’re so accustomed to the hours and hours of training and setup it takes to get a powerful production media engine up and running. In fact, quite a lot of people today are making a very good living out of being one of the select ‘secret society’ that can master the dark art of manipulating the industry-leading Media Servers of today.
Pixera is here to change all that. At its core, the goal of Pixera is to provide the simplest, and in turn, fastest and easiest-to-use user interface possible without sacrificing any of the power and advanced feature-set that today’s most demanding productions require. But the genius in doing that, is that Pixera isn’t restricted to ONLY the most demanding productions, it’s equally at home driving a single LED wall or a two projector blend. In regard to the latter, it takes a mere minutes to be up and running and take a blank project through creating to a multi-projector blend outputting content. Even less if you use the ability to do automatic camera-based alignment and blending… but let’s not get ahead ourselves here… enough waffling from me, let’s look at how it works.
The operation of Pixera is simple, the software is split into three sections or tabs (Screens, Mapping and Compositing).
A project begins with the Screens Tab – here you can choose either a projection surface or a display from the extensive library of options available. The entire catalogue of industry-leading AV Stumpfl projection screens is available for simple drag and drop addition to the project, or you can of course create genetic flat, curved or spherical screens. Likewise an exhaustive list of pretty much every LED tile product on the market is available to choose from, the software has data on resolution, size, weight, power consumption, etc which allows for simple creation of equipment lists. In addition to these a simple generic output display can be added for those quick and dirty projects, and it is also in this tab that you can bring in any custom 3D model for use in complex 3D projection mapping when the project calls for it.
Once anything that you want to project onto or display video on is added to the project the next step is the Mapping Tab. For projection, once again an ever-increasing library of every projector conceivable is ripe for the picking…right down to even mini table projectors for mocking up designs. You simply add the projector to the project space and point it at whatever you want it to project onto in real space. Need a multi-projector blend? No problem – fast and intuitive array tools allow you to duplicate out to multiple projectors, arrange them as desired and create a blend quicker than your Nespresso makes your home isolation morning coffee. It’s also here that we actually assign display devices (be it projectors, LED walls, generic screens, or lighting fixtures for pixel mapping) to physical outputs on our hardware to get the pixels out of software and into the real world.
Once we’ve got something to display video on, and a hole to spit it out of selected, we can move over to the Composting Tab. The Compositing Tab is where you will spend most of the time post setup, creating your actual show. Think of any Media Server term and you will find it here; layers, keyframes, timelines, DMX controls, content management, cues, timecode, etc. Once again simplicity and user experience are key here. Navigate to a piece of content in the Resources library (I didn’t mention how to get it in there, because that’s as mundane as dragging from a folder into the tab in the software…well now I’ve mentioned it anyway) and simply drag it over to one of your previously created screens. A new layer will instantly be created for you on the timeline and your content will be added at the current now pointer time. Hit the spacebar and it’s playing back. That’s it!
Of course the reality of a show isn’t that simple; you’ll need to scale content, move it about, create fades and all that lovely fun stuff but it all follows the same super-simple philosophy – Actually let’s just talk about fades – Need to transition to a new piece of content? Just drag it into the first on the timeline and a seamless crossfade is created. No messing about with multiple layers and all that brain headache. But what if that content arrives after the rehearsal (I’d say show, but what event producer would be crazy enough to ever expect you to add a piece of content mid-show…) has started and you need to make a change? Well, the days of explaining to the 5th person that’s asked you why the screens have gone black are over! Whilst the good folks at any lighting console manufacturer worth a pinch of salt have understood the need for a blind programmer since last century, for some reason, this concept seems to have escaped those building Media Servers. Not in Pixera, which offers a completely separate blind timeline that allows you to jump to somewhere else in your show, make and test out programming changes, all while the show continues running on stage as normal. When complete simple switch back to live, or seamlessly blend to your freshly programmed blind state! I nearly fell off my chair when I first saw that in beta!
A sister function to this is the ability to instantly jump to any random point on a timeline WITH transition (an invaluable feature for the more ‘spontaneous’ event directors one may find themselves working with). All of these simple and ease of use features are great and all, but they aren’t going to be much use if Pixera can’t take on the big boys of the Media Server world.
Lurking beneath the surface of this quick and simple user experience is an extremely powerful and capable media engine. Where Pixera excels is you only have to use a feature it if you need it.
If you just want to create a simple 2 projector blend for an awards ceremony, you don’t need to go near, or in fact even learn all of the complex 3D environment features. Nevertheless, as soon as you want to start dealing with multiple mixed media projects, complex sets, 3D modelling and projection mapping, the need to update projector and screen positions daily to deal with the real world of touring, be able to remap from X number of pixels in the content to Y number of pixels in the real world, all of these features are there.
Likewise, if the need to build your entire production design in a 3D environment and do full pre-production simulation of your video elements, the ability to do that is right there.
Another standout feature of Pixera is the unbelievably extensive API that is available to third-party products to control the Pixera environment; in fact absolutely anything within the environment can be manipulated through the API for endless integration possibilities. When it comes to real-time screen manipulation to facilitate moving set pieces and/or screens, a Direct Engine API is available to integrate with stage automation systems, camera tracking, etc.
For realtime effects and generative content Pixera has full support for Notch and Unreal and supports video transport in and out of the system over NDI, as well as the usual style of local live video inputs.
Where the ability to delve as far or as little into the capabilities of the system becomes extremely effective is when you begin to explore the notions of users growing with the system, and the abilities for companies to invest in an all-encompassing single-product platform. You don’t need to have one lot of kit running on an iMac for small presentations, another software package for your lighting programmers to dial-up LED screen content backgrounds, and then invest in yet another system fo the price of a nice car to fill the big touring rider; you can deploy the one platform across every scale of show, and have crew trained on one single cohesive system.
The same applies to hardware. Pixera starts at a simple software dongle to get some outputs running on your own hardware and flows right through to the range of Pixera Mini, Pixera One and Pixera Two hardware flavours. This means that you can invest at whatever level you require, whether that be for the price of a nice laptop, or that nice car when you want to push the limits of 8x 4k output running completely Uncompressed RAW content – yes Pixera offers an option for completely RAW content playout. The Pixera Two RT variant is optimised for use in Real Time Content creation environments. The other nice thing for growing companies is the ability to invest in Pixera at the level they need today, without being penalised for that tomorrow. Adding outputs to an existing Dongle comes with no price penalty compares with buying the extra outputs upfront for example.
We are doing Beta testing now for the 1.6 software version release so Pixera is certainly by no means complete, and whilst at start of its life cycle is certainly now a mature platform ready for most challenges that can be thrown at it. New features are being added all the time and the dedicated team are focussed on getting the product RIGHT not necessarily RIGHT NOW, a philosophy shared by some of the other manufactures we represent and one we certainly value within our company.
The family-owned business of AV Stumpfl, now overseen by the sons of the company’s founder is a passionate, solid and dedicated one. One which is determined to produce one of the most comprehensive Media Server Platforms in the industry, and if the past two years have shown us anything, it’s that they are certainly on their way to achieving their goal. Pixera may not be the one-stop solution that perfectly fits your specific needs today, but I urge everyone to take a look at what the platform has to offer during a time when we have plenty of spare time to do so.
There is a free demo version available to download which offers no feature limitations other than a watermark, a thriving and active official Facebook group, and the Australian distributor will only be only too eager to assist with any further questions anyone may have.
www.avstumpfl.com
Australian Distributor: Show Technology www.showtech.com.au
Clint Dulieu is a member of the Technical Sales team and Pixera product specialist at Show Technology Australia, a leading professional distributor offering lighting and AV solutions for commercial, entertainment and architectural projects across Australia and New Zealand.
If you would like to submit a review of a product please contact Cat cat@alia.com.au
