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Dell Precision is your virtual ticket to Austin City Limits Festival

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Want to watch Austin City Limits (ACL) this September 16-18, 2011 in Austin but have no ticket? No problem! Dell Precision workstations are powering the YouTube livestream that will broadcast acts from the two main stages. The broadcast times have been posted on ACL’s YouTube page, so just follow this link and you’ll be all set.

crowd at a music festival reaching up to catch tickets being dropped

Just as our workstations powered live and recorded video feeds of the 20th Lollapalooza festival in Chicago in August, Dell technology will once again help connect people to things that matter most to them.

You can read up on how exactly the production team, C3 Presents, and their video team, Arts + Labor, are using the technology here, but here’s a brief rundown:

  • Four different stages will be streamed live to viewers at home.
  • There are 3 – 4 cameras per stage with one switcher that will send video feeds over HD-SDI to two express cards / Matrox MXO2 capture devices to two Dell Precision M4600 mobile workstations.
  • There will be additional videographers around the festival capturing video of the fans, backstage interviews with musicians and other live shots. They will return the raw footage, stored on memory cards, to the “video village” and then load it onto the workstations via integrated memory card readers.
  • The mobile workstations with AMD FirePro M5950 graphic cards will capture all of the footage that will then be stored on the Dell Precision T7500.
  • One Dell Precision T5500 tower workstation with AMD FirePro V5900 will be used for editing with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects and the other T5500 will stream back to YouTube.
  • Two Dell UltraSharp U2410 monitors will be paired with each T5500 to provide pixel perfect color and reproduction of the footage and large screen real estate to make editing easy.

The new video editing workflow with Dell Precision workstations and Adobe Premiere software has enabled quicker turnaround time because there is no encoding, decoding or rendering and they can stream raw camera footage off the timeline. This saves C3 and Arts+Labor an enormous amount of time on input and output – approximately 40% time vs. working with Apple Macs and Final Cut Pro.

We’re really excited to bring creative professionals the power and technology requirements they are demanding. You may remember U2 used Dell Precision to power live and recorded video on the seven-story screen used in U2’s 360 degree tour. And it’s a two way street – we listened to our customers and have introduced the first mobile workstation with over 1 TB of SATA3 SSD storage.  People are excited about that, just check out the coverage on Engadget, AnandTech, Develop, V3, and Hot Hardware, to name a few.

Keep an eye out for more Dell Precision workstations in the creative field and let us know where you spot them in the comments below!

About the Author: Kirk Schell

Kirk Schell is senior vice president of Dell’s Commercial Client Product Group. In this role he is responsible for overseeing strategy, planning, launch and sustaining programs, brand and messaging for Dell Latitude commercial client products and Dell’s Internet of Things edge computing portfolio. Mr. Schell has held multiple leadership roles in his 18 year career at Dell. Previously, he led the Marketing organization for Dell’s Business Client Product Group and was responsible for product strategy, product planning and management, messaging and overall business performance of the Latitude, OptiPlex and Dell Precision brands. Before that role, he served in Shanghai, China as director of the Vostro Product Group for Dell’s Small and Medium Business (SMB) division. In that capacity he was responsible for the Vostro desktop and notebook product line and Emerging Market products in Dell’s portfolio of SMB products worldwide. Before joining Dell, Mr. Schell served as an officer in the United States Navy in the US Navy Nuclear Power Program. He also served as the United States Navy Liaison to Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth in Devon, England. Mr. Schell holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from The University of Michigan. He now lives in Austin, Texas after repatriating in June 2010 from Shanghai, China and the Dell China Design Center.