CASE STUDY

Shania Twain’s“Queen of Me”
Tour is a crowningsuccess deploying
Disguise IP-VFCtechnology

www.disguise.oneSummary
One of the best-selling music artists of all time, Shania Twain
completed her ﬁfth headlining concert tour, “Queen of Me,” latelast year after playing 68 dates in North America and ten in
Europe. The tour supported her eponymous sixth studio album
and followed a highly successful Las Vegas residency run from2019 through 2022.
The tour capitalised on the long-standing relationship between
Twain’s producers and US rental partner Fuse Technical Group,
which dates back to Twain’s ﬁrst Vegas residency in 2014 andher use of Disguise 4x4pro media servers on the road. Fuse
was hired as the crew supplier and video equipment vendor for“Queen of Me”, with Video Design in the UK as the rental
partner for the UK-based shows. Cory FitzGerald from Silent
House was the tour’s Creative Producer.
Twain designed the show herself and played a very hands-on
role throughout. She was directly involved with the production
and programming aspects and often remained at theproduction table until the video programming team wrapped up
their work every night.

Image credits: Lizzie Wood

The Challenge
The creative concept for the show featured multiple LEDsurfaces, including a massive upstage wall, riser fascia, LED
ﬂoor, LED banners, and LED IMAG screens – a lot of video in avery tight space and a large canvas for the content team at
Blink to work with.
The programming team at Dark Matter began pre-vis for theshow in March 2023, and as production design came together,lead Disguise programmer, Adam Fontana, realised someserious horsepower was required on the server side.
The need for high quality, reliable signal delivery to all of thescreens, including 4K camera inputs and 4K canvas outputs,
called for three full 4K rasters and a low-latency system withthe cleanest delivery path and the fewest format conversions
possible. A Disguise GX 3 server package equipped with
IP-VFC cards was selected to do the job.
Although Fontana’s team did not have servers available for thefew weeks of pre-vis, the ability to run the full watermarked
software on a laptop meant they could get a head start
nonetheless. They connected Designer to sACN and captured
the output into Syncronorm’s Depence visualiser to program
the majority of the show before any trucks hit the dock.

Image credits: Fred Thiebaud

The Solution
The tour’s full 4K video pipeline had cameras running at 4K60
and capturing two 12G M/Es from the switcher. All Notch
generative eﬀects also ran at 4K.
The Fuse team jumped at the chance to provide native 12G
outputs to LED processors via the 12G SFPs in the IP-VFCcards. This enabled them to monitor 4K outputs while using anoﬀ-the-shelf 40x40 12G router to distribute signal everywhere.
The process reduced a lot of electronic waste in the rack andallowed the techs to easily diagnose a point of failure withsignal should something go wrong.
Typically, Fuse would have a screens management interface
between the media servers and the LED processors, whether
an E2 or a Spyder, but the IP-VFC cards’ native 12G outputs
helped eliminate the need for that format conversion. Most of
the time they took either DisplayPort or HDMI video signals andconverted them to SDI, mainly for monitoring and for singledistribution purposes for ease of use. But the IP-VFC cards
bypassed those needs and pumped straight out to the routerand then directly to the screens without introducing any
additional latency. This was a substantial improvement overprevious shows.

Image credits: Fred Thiebaud

The Solution
Dark Matter found that the GX 3 allowed them to incorporate
Notch eﬀects on the camera feeds, including some instancesof AI background replacement. Notch was deployedthroughout the show, often in very subtle ways.
Fontana and his team programmed primarily in Sockpuppet,
giving Lighting Director and Sockpuppet Programmer, AndréPetrus, ultimate control and the ability to tightly couple lighting
and video cues.
They created an additional version of the show ﬁle in timeline
mode for use at festival dates. This enabled Fontana or thetouring tech to make oﬄine edits and accommodate diﬀerent
LED setups without having to involve the lighting programmer.

Image credits: Lizzie Wood

“The decision to use GX 3 servers
and IP-VFC cards for the tour was
based on the need to support Notch
background removal eﬀects andeliminate the need for format
conversion, resulting in improved
latency and overall performance.”
Patrick Eaton
Project Manager
Fuse Technical Group

Image credits: Adrian Bretscher

Results
The tour was among the ﬁrst in the world to implement the GX
3 with IP-VFC set up. Its success set a benchmark for future
tours by Fuse, giving them a new path forward for upcomingshows.
The use of native 12G video outputs from the IP-VFC cards
was a groundbreaking achievement and a testament to thereliability and durability of the Disguise hardware. The “Queenof Me” tour was an important proving ground for a process
which will greatly beneﬁt more shows to come.

Image credits: Fred Thiebaud

Disguise equipment used

GX 3DESIGNER

IP-VFCThe GX 3 is the most powerfuland versatile Disguise machine todate, unlocking new potential ingenerative graphics thanks to its
GPU’s processing capabilities.

Designer is the ultimate software
to visualise, design, andsequence projects at every stage,
from concept all the way throughto showtime.

The IP-VFC is a patented video
format conversion card thatenables a ST 2110 video output
from Disguise media servers tothe LED screen.

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In Partnership withShow Design: Shania Twain
Creative Producer: Cory Fitzgerald (Silent House Group)
Lighting Direction / Sockpuppet Programmer: André Petrus
Disguise Programmer: Adam Fontana (Dark Matter Technologies)
Content: Blink MediaVideo Vendor (US): Fuse Technical GroupVideo Vendor (UK): Video Design
Touring Disguise Tech: Ben RotellaGet in touch
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