CP Comms, White Cherry Entertainment Call Upon Barnfind for Fiber Transport System at 2016 Tony Awards

CP Communications called upon Barnfind Americas (U.S. presence for Norwegian manufacturer Barnfind Technologies) to design and supply a fiber-based signal transport system to White Cherry Entertainment, the production team responsible for the American Theatre Wing’s 2016 Tony Awards.

“CP Communications was tasked with providing White Cherry Entertainment with a system that could not only offer up the versatility required for a live broadcast, but do it from a very small footprint,” says John McCluskey, Director of Sales at Barnfind Americas. ”Maximizing functionality in compact quarters combined with uncompromising reliability were key. The BarnFind BarnOne BTF-02 fiber optic system proved ideal for the situation and became an essential component of the overall project and its success.”

Barnfind Americas designed a modular system comprised of two BarnOne-02 frames, each with 8 channels of HD/SDI to optical conversion and a pair of BT-House-LGX-CWDM-16 multiplexers, and one (1) pair of Ethernet to optical SFPs. Producers were able to occupy up to 8 HD/SDI electrical sources from BNC to optical fiber either individually on a one-to-one basis or multiplex them together over a single fiber link. The system also allowed them to transport Gig-E network traffic over the same fiber link and offered CP Communications’ support technicians the modular flexibility they sought while saving valuable rack space.

“One of the advantages of using the Barnfind solution was the refined modular configuration, which ended up being a key element of the deployment,” says Michael Mason, President of CP Communications, “Throughout the setup week, the video distribution was somewhat of a moving target as production elements changed. Using the BTF-02 matrix capability, we were able to revise signal flow as it became necessary. We also had the luxury of routing the spare fiber and video signals beforehand so when the add requests started coming, the paths for the newly desired feeds were already in line.”

“From an operational standpoint, this compact 1RU frame packs quite the punch,” adds McCluskey.