Fairlight’s ground-breaking Crystal Core (CC-1) technology is proving to be a winner for Française des Jeux, the French national lottery organisation that also handles the Euro Millions lottery.
Based in Paris, Française des Jeux has an in-house audio and video production facility that is used to create TV commercials and a regular talk show. The facility is equipped with a Fairlight Constellation console, which has now been upgraded to the CC-1 platform. FDJ has also installed Fairlight MediaLink so that it can easily connect its Constellation to its Avid video editing system.
FDJ’s post production senior manager Richard Perez says: “Fairlight has always offered exceptional technology and we were very happy working with the old QDC platform. However, it only took one demo of the new CC-1 technology to convince me that we needed to upgrade. We now have a much faster and more efficient system and this has helped us increase workflow and dramatically reduce the amount of amount of time it takes to set up before a session.”
Perez adds that FDJ now plans to upgrade its Constellation console to include the new Xynergi Centre Panel. It is hoped that this work will take place within the next few months.
Incorporated into Fairlight’s key products such as Constellation and Xynergi, CC-1 has placed the company at the forefront of ‘green’ computing initiatives by providing an alternative processing platform that delivers increased performance with dramatically lower power consumption. In a world where energy price rises and climate change are major concerns for every business, this technology is proving enormously popular because it performs digital audio and video processing hundreds of times more efficiently than state-of-the-art CPUs or digital signal processors.
The French market in particular has been keen to embrace CC-1. Other facilities that have recently upgraded include France 3’s regional production centers in Amiens and Orleans, both of which are equipped with Dream Constellation consoles. The facilities, which are used for news and magazine program production, have also installed AV Process 3.0 CCE (Crystal Core Edition), a new tool developed by Fairlight’s French business partner EuroMedia Technologies that allows them to automate their entire production workflow.
Over in Strasburg, France 3 has a much larger production centre where it makes programming in HD and 5.1. Here it has two studios - one for 5.1 film and TV projects and one multipurpose room. Both have Constellation consoles and these have also been upgraded to the CC-1 platform. It has also installed MediaLink to network the two studios.
Denis Derigent, managing director of EuroMedia Technologies, says: “France is a very buoyant market for Fairlight and, despite the economic doom and gloom, we are seeing steady sales for the company’s products. As well as the CC-1 upgrades already mentioned we have also recently installed a CC-1 engine into Highway in Paris. Over the summer, this facility was the first to install a new Constellation XCS console, which runs on the new platform and now has pride of place in studio 1. The facility owner was so impressed with the efficiencies his staff could achieve using CC-1 that he has now upgraded the existing Constellation console in Studio 2.”
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