UPDATE: More details have emerged regarding Adele’s record-breaking videowall that secured its spot in the Guinness Book, which enhanced the performances that entertained nearly three quarters of a million fans. Official video supplier for the residency, Solotech, chose Brompton Technology to handle the LED processing for the massive display. Brompton Technology’s Adam Callaway noted that the team collaborated closely with Solotech for over a year on the project, which included testing and validating workflows based on Adele’s Las Vegas residency and additional testing in the UK. “Brompton joined Solotech on site for three days to ensure smooth deployment of the workflows needed from our 4K Tessera SX40 LED processors,” said Callaway.
Featuring 6,200 tiles of ROE CB5 MKII, all calibrated using Brompton’s Hydra measurement system to enable Dynamic Calibration technology, the setup took full advantage of features like PureTone and Extended Bit Depth, ensuring uniform video content even at extremes of brightness and color gamut. With a total of 26 Tessera SX40 and over 100 Tessera XD 10G data distribution units providing a seamless and flexible LED processing solution, the screen is the largest of its kind ever deployed for a temporary live event.
Last month we reported on Adele set to enter the Guinness Book of World Records with the giant videowall that accompanied her Munich residency. Guinness has since officially recognized the videowall in the “largest continuous outdoor LED screen (temporary)” category, and we now know more about how it was made possible.
Visuals for Adele in Munich, which took place over 10 nights in a bespoke, 80,000-capacity stadium, were handled by Disguise. The company helped to create, sync, and display visuals on a 4,159.7 square meter (13,647 sq ft) LED wall that would be assembled to look like a strip of film.
“To ensure all the high-resolution visuals—ranging from close-ups of Adele to blazing fires—were seamlessly displayed, systems integrator Solotech worked with programmer Richard Turner and the set design team at Stufish,” says Disguise. “Together, they used eight Disguise GX3 servers to power the wall with full 1:1 redundancy, ensuring the whole canvas was kept perfectly in sync between machines. They also used 18 SDI VFC cards, enabling the servers to output SDI natively to the LED processors, removing the need for downstream conversion. The show was sequenced to timecode, with Disguise’s Designer software compositing rendered visuals, Notch effects and capture inputs to deliver ultimate flexibility for the Treatment Studio team.”
“With tens of thousands watching, perfection is our goal every single night,” says Lizzie Pocock, producer at Treatment Studio. “When you’re working with screens this large, there’s nowhere to hide. Disguise gives us the confidence to deliver flawless video playback consistently. Its reliability and flexibility, coupled with the ability to quickly iterate on-site, are invaluable. This allows us to focus our energy on the creative, knowing we’re on solid ground technically.”
The following was originally published August 14, 2024:
Last week we reported on Adele stopping an arena concert in Munich to watch the Olympics with her fans on the gigantic video wall behind her. Now, it’s being reported that this very video wall is the world’s largest. While international acts like Kanye West and Taylor Swift tour with large-scale video walls (59×59-foot and 111.5-foot, respectively), Adele was able to go much larger, thanks in part to the fact that the arena she performed in was custom-made for her shows.
Named Adele Arena, the venue has a capacity of 75,000, and was constructed for her stretch of shows in Munich for the month of August. As the arena was constructed specifically for these performances, Adele’s shows are able to feature a massive 720×65-foot video wall. Multiple publications are now reporting that the display is expected to enter the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest outdoor video wall in the coming weeks. Until the record is official, enjoy the video above to get a sense of scale of the record-breaking video wall.
