Wallern a.d. Trattnach (Austria), 27th September 2023 – Founded in 1829, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is famous for its multi-disciplinary blend of technology, the arts and design. The acclaimed university provides a wide range of academic opportunities for its more than 19,000 students and more than 135,000 graduates from 50 states and over 100 nations.
Recently, RIT completed a highly anticipated building project on its campus called the SHED, short for Student Hall for Exploration and Development. This new creative hub will centralize the university’s maker space and performing arts studios and theaters.
An important visual detail of the inspiring structure is the new 3072 x 3584px Planar LED marquee, a key component of the SHED’s celebration space, which was donated by RIT’s famous alumnus Austin McChord.
The successful entrepreneur, who was named an Outstanding Alumnus by RIT earlier this year, is an avid supporter of his alma mater and favors the experiential learning approach that defines many of RIT’s acclaimed courses.
After looking at different options for a state-of-the-art media server system to support the LED-marquee’s content playout setup, RIT chose an AV Stumpfl’s PIXERA four server, perfect for highly demanding real-time graphics applications and XR/broadcast setups.
In addition to having a reputation for offering an intuitive UI combined with a powerful render engine, the award-winning 64-bit system for real-time media processing, compositing, and management has also become increasingly popular in the world of virtual productions, a fact that didn’t escape the notice of David Long, director of RIT’s MAGIC Center.
MAGIC, short for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction & Creativity, is a university-wide research and development laboratory and a commercial production studio that assists in efforts to bring digital media creations up to marketplace standards and commercialization.
Long comments on RIT’s decision to invest in PIXERA media server hardware:
“On a purely practical level, we have the technical requirements related to our new marquee. PIXERA fitted the bill perfectly, both in terms of the feature versatility and general ROI. Since we have many courses, however, where our students would benefit from getting hands-on experience with a high-end media server platform like PIXERA, our interest goes beyond having a great playout system, ”
Long joined the faculty of the School of Film and Animation at RIT in 2007, where he also serves as an Associate Professor for the motion picture science program.
“We want our students to create, collaborate, and perform together at the highest possible level. PIXERA can act as a powerful bridge between our design, film production, and engineering courses. Our plan is to gradually introduce PIXERA to our curriculum so that our students from different disciplines are empowered to turn their creative and technological ideas into a tangible reality.”