Digital and automated lighting has been transformed, as we all know, by companies like Barco with new LED and LCD-based systems. Barco announced in the last few weeks that new software is now available for the High End Systems Digital Lighting family, including the DL.3 Digital Light and the Axon media server.

The v1.5 software release not only fixes some bugs that were identified, but also expands feature functionality and provides a host of improvements and updates. Major features include frame blending, for smooth, slow motion playback, and the expansion of “collage generator capability,” which allows users to create a setup that is now up to 16 fixtures wide by eight fixtures high. A new “segmented collage” feature enables advanced users to pre-slice their content in order to create large collages with very high overall resolutions.

On the feature front, Barco added automatic content encoding validation. This unique process scans content as it is being loaded into the system, in order to ensure correct encoding, trouble-free playback, and the elimination of performance issues that might result from encoding errors.  That’s cool!  Finally, other upgrades include new graphic effects, PAL support for the SDI input, plus the ability for users to add HD-SDI cards in the Axon media server. In addition, the Content Management Application (CMA) now displays more detailed data, such as movie length, resolution, frame rate and frame count.