MTV’s Isle of MTV festival burst into life on the beautiful island of Malta this summer with a lineup of pop music heavyweights performing on the main stage, backed by shifting LED screens powered by a Hippotizer Mayon+ MK2 Media Server.

As one of Europe’s most celebrated festivals, Isle of MTV Malta attracts more than 50,000 people to dance in the sun-drenched, iconic Il-Fosos Square. Now in its 14^th year, the festival is shown on MTV as well as Sky and via online platforms.

Two Grammy-nominated artists headlined the 2022 event, kicking off with superstar DJ Marshmello and followed by the multi-platinum artist French Montana and English singer Mae Muller, among many others.

UK-based video solutions company Digital Insanity was commissioned to deploy their characteristic dynamic, dazzling visual delivery and operation for the main stage, which featured an upstage LED screen, three further onstage screens which were moved around between acts, changing the look of the set, and four LED arches.

“Our role on this event was creating video branding to match the style of this year’s event, creating all pixelmaps and dealing with all of the artists’ video requirements, including video content for Mae Muller, [Maltese rising star] Shaun Farrugia, and half of French Montana’s video show as well as playback for several local acts as part of the pre-show,” explains Digital Insanity’s Richard Bagshaw. “The video designs were sent over and I designed a playback system which would support all the requirements, with the Hippotizer Mayon+ MK2 at the core of the system.

“It was a mixed bag of requirements, so we needed a flexible system that offered the ability to freerun – busk – video and also run timecode for some of the acts. Using the Mayon+ MK2 delivered smooth playback to large canvas files, which was amazing as we were running 6800x3800px video in Lossless codec. The output looked amazing, pumping out two 4K signals. I was impressed by how well it played high-resolution media with such an uncompressed codec.”

Bagshaw operated the show as a mixture of live busking and timecode, utilizing Hippotizer’s VideoMapper, Sync Manager, and MultiController to power and control the visuals.

“One of the standout moments for me was during Mae Muller’s performance,” Bagshaw continues. “We designed every video look for her 45-minute set and it was driven by timecode from the stage. I love a timecode show, especially when you make the content as every little inflection or change is as you designed it in the edit. Overall, it was a great looking show.”