Hippotizer MediaMaps

Often, the little things have the biggest impact.

In Hippotizer V1, Green Hippo introduced "MediaMaps" (also known as "Hippotizer Personalities"), which are nothing but XML files that can be read over the network. This XML files contain some information (e.g. Name, Resolution etc.) for each Media (Picture or Movie), and also a reference to a Thumbnail file (which can also be accessed over the network).

This had a big impact on the Lighting Industry: Lighting Consoles (if i remember correctly, the first one was MagicQ from ChamSys) could suddenly display information about Media of MediaServers within their own GUI, which was not at all possible before. This was such a powerful and important improvement that only a very few weeks later, each other MediaServer in the industry supported MediaMaps too - some of them an 1:1 copy of Green Hippos format.

Yesterday I found a nice web article "Fall Out Boy European Tour with MagicQ" that describes the powerful synergy of MagicQ and Hippotizer through simple MediaMaps:

The rig itself comprised 20 Robe ColourSpot 1200ATs, 20 MAC600s, 14 Atomic strobes with scrollers, 20 ChromaQ Colourblock DB4s, 20 LED Par64s, 260 VersaTUBES driven from a Hippotizer plus a variety of moles, generics and dimmers over four universes of ArtNet."

[...]

Esteban spent two days at ChamSys' demo room in Southampton, familiarising himself with the console and pre-programming the lighting and media servers. ChamSys’ demo room has full Capture/WYSIWYG facilities along with both Hippotizer and ArKaos media servers, enabling lighting designers to sample the full benefits of MagicQ without the pressure of a show situation. ChamSys was able to set up visualisation so that Esteban could see exactly how the Hippotizer images would be mapped to the five separate sections of versaTUBE LED array spread around the stage.

[...]

ChamSys has worked very closely with Green Hippo (manufacturers of Hippotizer) to ensure that control of media servers from MagicQ is straightforward. MagicQ supports a special Media Window solely for controlling media servers, which makes it much easier to control several different media servers. You can select media server, media layer, attributes and media content all from the same window. In addition, you can view and select directly on screen the media thumbnails for up to 50 different media servers each with different media content. MagicQ downloads and stores thumbnail previews of the media content from each media server independently and even supports a live preview of the media server output and layers.
Esteban used the media window to feed the camera output and Hippotizer media to playback the show direct to the versaTUBEs on stage, giving the audience a close up view of the action. Esteban commented: “It is so easy to use (MagicQ) to program the media, the thumbnails and live previews make the task much quicker.”

The following two pictures show the MagicQ connectivities and a screenshot of Hippotizer Media Thumbnails (accessed through the MediaMap), displayed in MagicQs GUI.