Daniel Connell, founder and CEO of DC Pro production agency calls the.BRIDGE a “magic black box.” Connell says, “I've been in this business since the early 90s, so I came up during a time when things were still very analogue and we didn't have a lot of networking technology. The.BRIDGE creates a very simplified network between two points, so you don't have to have a deep level understanding.” Designed and manufactured by Just Networking and distributed in the US by ACT Entertainment, the.BRIDGE can be plugged into anything with a USB or Ethernet port, to run whatever it is you want to run, remotely.
Lead designer and event manager at DC Pro, Bryan Landry, describes how it works. “It's literally a black box that you plug into the Internet and connect to two lighting consoles, or laptops, or audio software, and the boxes talk to each other. It allows us to connect systems that previously had to be right beside each other and now can be anywhere at all. Plug one into whatever piece of equipment you want and then it will talk to its friend in another country, or another part of the building, as if they were sitting next to each other.” Recently. Landry was able to share programming duties with lighting designer Tony Fransen on One Republic’s current tour, even though the two were in different countries. Landry was able to work on the show in an Airbnb in Houston, TX, while Fransen was in the rehearsal space in Manchester, UK.
Landry says using the.BRIDGE was, “The equivalent of having Fransen’s console backing up on to mine. The second I began work my console was already where his was at.” There was no waiting around for updates or transferring large files. Fransen was lighting designer and main programmer on the tour, but with a three-week timeframe he reached out to DC Pro for help.
Fransen was working late into the night in the UK and found that because of the time difference, he was able to work with Landry for a couple of hours and when he finished work, “Brian would still be fresh enough that he could continue working and that gave us an extra four or five hours every day that we got additional work done, which was amazing.” He points out an additional benefit: “If a show is on tour and needs somebody to go in for some reason, either the programming needs to be adjusted or the band decides to add something at the last minute, if the operator doesn’t have the capacity right then it would allow us a strong option to just connect to the Internet and jump in, which is pretty cool. We could do additions to the show in real life and in real time.”
Fransen explained the looks he wanted and could see them in the venue, while Landry programmed seeing them in layout view and WYSIWYG on his end. In the future, Landry says, “We think we could push video over IP through the.BRIDGE so that we can get a live feed. We just didn't have time to try on this project.”
In addition to linking lighting consoles, Landry says that, at least while they were both in the US, “We were able to push some Dante audio of the show between us.”
Connell decided to invest in the.BRIDGE for his business primarily because of the simple set up, the devices plug into any Ethernet or USB port and just work, but also because it allows his business to take on projects that otherwise would not be feasible. Not only is the price of a box, at $2,499, less than the cost of a flight and hotel for a programmer to join a tour, but staffing shortages mean that often there isn’t a programmer available to travel. Landry was able to work on One Republic in the UK while also programming another project in the US.
Fransen agrees that without the.BRIDGE he would not always be able to have a secondary programmer. “Often we can afford to pay an additional day rate, but we can't necessarily deal with all the travel and accommodations, so it could save almost half the budget and it feels like having a programmer onsite.” Added bonus: accessing a project from anywhere in the world can reduce its carbon footprint.
Connell, Fransen, and Landry all said they would be using the.BRIDGE in the future. Fransen said, “I think that it's kind of opened up a new world for us. We're always looking for ways to be able to do things, not just more affordably, but more efficiently.”
The system is console agnostic and each box can access multiple projects, the user selects the project to work on from a list on the website, and the boxes can move between projects simply by plugging them into equipment for each show. Connell says “They require very little expertise in terms of configuration.”
At 2.4lbs, the boxes are lightweight and portable, and each box can communicate with any of the others, they are not programmed to twin with only one other. Each device can handle up to 500 Mbps of encrypted throughput.
Tested entertainment protocols include:
Lighting Networking
- GENERIC PROTOCOLS: sACN (Multicast & Unicast), Artnet (Broadcast & Unicast)
- MA-LIGHTING: MA-NET, MA-NET2, MA-NET3
- ETC: ETCNet
- HIGH END SYSTEMS: HOGNet, FixtureNET
- CHAMSYS: ChamSys Remote Ethernet Protocol
- AVOLITES: TitanNET, SLP, LiveDMX, RDMNet
Video Networking
- Traditional Streaming Protocols: RTMP & RTSP/RTP
- HTTP-Based Protocols: HLS & Apple HLS, MPEG, CMAF
- NewTek: NDI, NDI|HX
- Open Source Video Technologies: SRT, WebRTC
- Green Hippo: HippoNet
- Disguise: d3Net