Heavyweight Hippotizer Visuals Wow WWE Tour

Real-time media playback solutions heavyweight Green Hippo deployed its range of Hippotizer Media Servers to fight for world-class visuals with the season premieres of WWE Monday Night Raw and WWE Friday Night SmackDown television shows.

Fourteen robust Hippotizer Media Servers braved the WWE road: made up of Karst, Karst+ and Boreal+ machines. In total, more than 20,000 individual clips were processed during each performance, with pre-made content mixed with effects generated within Hippotizer V4.5.

The global entertainment company WWE – known for its audience-grabbing, in-ring energetic theatrical drama – wowed crowds across the US, Middle East and Europe with big name appearances and new staging augmented with mammoth LED screens and visuals.

“The team used a custom 4.5.2 build of the Hippotizer software, the biggest reason being so we could utilize SHAPE, which allowed production designer Jason Robinson to achieve effects he has been wanting to create for a long time,” said Tony Thompson from Upstaging, who oversaw the Media Server aspects of the WWE tour and specified the Hippotizer machines. “SHAPE was relatively simple to use, after a little training.”

The tour proved to be one of the first major examples of V4.5’s new output mapping feature, Object to Output, which maps content to outputs directly inside SHAPE’s 3D workspace, ingeniously simplifying the management of large numbers of displays.

The team’s army of Hippotizers comprised five Karst units with single output SDI 1920×1080; seven Karst+ with three set up with single output SDI 1920×1080 and four with Dual Output SDI; and two Boreal+ machines outputting four SDI 1920×1080. All the Hippotizer + machines utilized an entire SHAPE Workflow common between all machines.

“WWE has been using Hippo ever since we started doing the tour,” Thompson continued. “The reason it has stayed Hippo is because of the inbuilt effects, great DMX control scenario, and reliability. Zookeeper being used for Media Sync and monitoring is also paramount.

“From my side, it has been great. We greatly appreciate the involvement and support from all those at Hippo. Especially Ryan Brown, Nigel Sadler, and Cory Froke.”