Overture Center for the Arts is a historical landmark in the heart of a thriving cultural arts district in Madison Wisconsin. It offers a variety of spaces for concerts, theatrical performances, corporate meetings, weddings, banquets, and receptions. It is the home to ten resident organizations presenting more than 200 performances, art exhibitions, and educational and community events each year. There are seven performance venues that range from a 2250 seat theater, a 1000 seat theater, a 350-seat thrust stage theater and smaller rooms setup for rehearsals, recitals, meetings and banquets.

Brian Anderson is the Technical Associate at the Overture Center and is responsible for AV Production within the facility. Because of the diversity of events they host each year, they needed an AV switcher with both audio and video flexibility. They currently own two Roland V-40HD video switchers and are thrilled with the capabilities but were looking for something with more audio functionality for all of the corporate productions they do every month. The Roland VR-50HD’s all-in-one design, which includes a digital audio mixer, video mixer, preview monitor, USB output for streaming or recording, plus the flexibility of multi-formats, makes it the perfect solution for their needs.

They first used the Roland VR-50HD on a corporate event mixing a couple of computer PowerPoint inputs with embedded audio and video and a couple lavaliere microphones. The mixed output was sent to LCD screens, a high definition projector and a PA system. Anderson says, “It was very nice to be able to use one product to produce this event. Having the preview monitors built-in eliminates the need for a lot of extraneous gear, but at the same time having the flexibility to use an external monitors is a bonus.” The audio capabilities are equally important with the ability to mix external microphones, line level music sources as well as audio from HDMI or SDI sources. The audio follows video function is especially useful for video being played from a DVD player or media server, plus having delay on the audio channels ensures perfect lip sync for IMAG applications in the Overture Center.

For production in the theaters they run video to the projectors using SDI, which allows us the highest resolution picture quality at 1080p along with the ability to go long distance to the projectors. In their smaller venues they use HDMI out of the VR-50HD and convert to cat5e to reach the projectors.

The Overture Center produces National Geographic Live, which is a series of four popular shows throughout the year. They use the Roland VR-50HD exclusively for these events because it has multiple video output settings from 480p up to 1080p with scaling on each input and output channel allowing them to correctly format both the PowerPoint presentations and the various video formats. Because the VR-50HD has multiple output ports they also send a second source coming out HDMI going to an HDMI to Cat5e converter as a backup signal to the projector, which is especially important for mission critical events. The VR-50HD provides the flexibility, mobility and the power needed to produce most any event at the Overture Center for the Arts.

For more information about Overture Center for the Arts: www.overturecenter.com.