by Alex Hasker, Lex Audio Visual
“I discovered the Norwegian brand Barnfind through an associate in the same industry. The BarnColor range were the first robust, self-contained, field-deployable multi-channel HD-SDI video over fibre units that I had seen that require zero config. The equipment we were previously using for this kind of application was very expensive, and required a lot of configuration and specialised knowledge, particularly when dealing with video signals of differing resolutions.
In AV applications, people mix and match resolutions all the time, and you usually don’t find out what you’re dealing with until the gig. This isn’t a great situation, and it took a lot of work to deal with. When I saw that BarnColor pretty much eliminated this issue, I picked them up the moment they landed.”
An average gig for us involves using the BarnColor as a remote stage box for remote cameras running HD-SDI and bringing
their signals to the vision mixing position, which could be FoH, BoH or in an OB truck. We could be running PTZs, POV cameras, return feeds, and screen feeds, and we’re typically working on multi camera concert shoots or broadcasts. We use a mixture of Sony broadcast cameras, Panasonic PTZs, and Marshall POV cameras. Our main vision mixing platform is Ross Carbonite. At the moment, we’re using the SDI models of BarnColor, up to 3G, but we do have 4K on the horizon.
