Maxedia for Giant ‘Yaralla Sports Club’ Video Wall

Yaralla Sports Club, the home ground of entertainment in Gladstone, Queensland, Australia is a venue that is highly regarded for its fantastic facilities. The Club includes bars, function rooms and poker machine areas, and adding to their reputation for innovative approaches is a forty meter long video wall which has been installed into their gaming lounge.

Doing the impossible
Club AV Pty Ltd, a well respected installation and design company for over twenty years, installed the giant video wall – a task that both consultants and others said could not be done.

“The requirement was very difficult to work with,” explained Andrew Wood, Queensland Operations Manager for Club AV. “The Client wanted a full forty meter digital video system that would handle the requirements of a unique experience for his patrons as well as handling any color, video or image for the venue if needed for special events.

“After drawing up the proposed system with our suppliers we had the client come and inspect the proposed system and, needless to say, this was only the start of a challenging and frustrating systems design. Basically, at the meeting, what was presented and what was required were two totally different things. However, after returning to the white board and further conversation with our suppliers, we were able to bring both systems together as one which was obviously more than pleasing to our client.”

Maxedia Digital Media Composer
From the moment the client asked about digital images in a video wall Andrew’s instant thought was the Martin Maxedia. Maxedia imagery, interfaced with a video scaler and displayed through 10 LCD projectors, creates a screen 4m high x 40m wide in the Club’s Poker Machine room.

”Being the fact that it is a product designed to bring together the lighting and video engineer in a production environment used mainly on LED panels or large projectors, no one had tried or done what we planned to do. After speaking with Show Technology (Martin’s Australian distributor) this is the first Maxedia installed permanently in a venue of this kind in the country.

“There were several reasons why we chose Maxedia,” Andrew continues. “First, Maxedia was able to handle all requirements of image, video and anything else we could throw at it. We had to leave the system running with staff members from the venue in control - remembering that these staff had never used nor seen a simple lighting board - yet we were able to give them quick easy options with the Maxedia. They have full control just as an LD would. Maxedia really gave us simple and sophisticated control.

“The system is really easy to operate and if you do get it wrong you can easily start again with little effort, Maxedia really gave us a heap of useful renders straight out of the box. It was very easy to integrate, and as we have a processor set-up to allow the 40 odd meters of vision, we were able to make a template for the client to simply drag any picture, image or movie file in to the system. So, in actual fact, we are currently using Maxedia to effectively process and layer the images as required.”

Andrew uses both Maxedia stock footage and custom content. “I must say the stock footage is some of the best footage I’ve seen. A lot of the clients’ requests were already there as stock - we have added corporate logos and had some really funky stuff added. We currently are adding the next stage which will see the addition of DMX interfacing to it to recall. We have been testing the jackpot link up with the gaming machines and also adding another matrix output to serve to Maxedia We actually run some video feed back loops into the system for an extra ‘wow’ factor.

“In reality the Maxedia did exactly what we wanted - every thing that was required we achieved with little time spent. Remembering that it is operated daily by hospitality staff, it was the most suitable product that was available for what we wanted.”

Digital video processor
Club AV also commissioned a digital video processor for the vision requirements. The wall uses 10 XGA Infocus Projectors to handle the vision with each projector receiving high resolution images over Cat 5 cabling transmitted and received using Magenta Research products.

“Both Ian Medland, Club AV’s in-house AV and IT support technician, and I spent a lot of time on the video processor,” Andrew says, “and I clearly believe that we broke a few rules with this one! The client is over the moon with the final result. They can have a simple color changing wall or have clouds rolling by. You can even have the State of Origin playing while coloring the walls at the same time in the team colors! Really, your imagination is the limit and we are currently working on taking the system again to the next level for the client.

“It was a hard slog for both the Club AV guys and I, trying to make the customers’ vision become a reality,” added Darren McLanders of Show Technology. “I can tell you my brain was melted after the first meeting. The whiteboard looked like that of a physics lab! My hat is off to the Club AV guys though; they certainly made it all happen.”