Set in the central business district of Makati in the Philippines, HIT Productions is a well-established postproduction studio known for its work in advertising, music, film and streaming. With recent changes in how content is created, distributed and consumed, it increasingly found itself struggling to meet the needs of its production teams and clients.

Studios in the old facility were based on analogue point-to-point connections built in the era of specialised rooms with limited signal routing options. When a new building became available in 2021, HIT welcomed the opportunity to build a new facility that would allow them to meet the challenges of a constantly changing technology ecosystem. 

Audinate’s Dante AV was chosen to transport all audio and video between rooms. ‘Dante AV gave us the flexibility to connect rooms in any number of combinations with standard Cat6 Ethernet cables,’ says Dennis Cham, Founding Partner and Chief Technology Officer of HIT Productions. ‘Audio and video quality is exceptional, and the flexibility to route audio and video around the facility on just a few cables was very liberating.’

Cham recognised that the new facility needed a flexible A/V design to support the physical reconfiguration of the studios for production needs, with ready re-routing of audio and video streams as required. Because the pandemic forced many employees to work remotely to keep onsite headcount down to minimize infections between staff and on-air talent, the A/V system also had to support hybrid workflows for the company’s employees.

Dante AV is a complete integrated audio and video networking solution, bringing to video all the benefits of Dante’s Audio-over-IP solution. All Dante AV family products use a single application to manage audio and video, and are interoperable with the more than 3,500 Dante products already on the market. 

Dante AV uses a single lead clock for the entire system – regardless of the number of endpoints – which allows independent routing of audio and video streams while maintaining tight synchronisation. HIT Productions uses high-performance Patton FiberPlex FPX6000 gateways to route video signals via Dante over the network to wherever they’re needed.

Audio I/O is routed via multiple Focusrite RedNet X2P portable Dante interfaces controlled by RedNet R1 controllers. In addition, Dante also connects multiple Focusrite Red and Avid MTRX Studio audio interfaces powering the larger production suites. 

HIT Productions currently has 12 production rooms running on Dante AV, with plans to expand to all 28 rooms over time. Dedicated Dante cabling has also been installed in the 12 hot desk-style workstations and the facility’s four conference/huddle rooms.

 ‘Dante AV was the perfect solution for us to send audio and video all over the facility with the lowest latency,’ Cham says. ‘It is cutting-edge technology that will allow us to be more productive and expand to meet the challenges of a changing industry.’ 

More: www.audinate.com