QUICK DELIVERY KEEPS MILLBANK STUDIOS ON AIR (June 2004)

Crystal Vision saved the day with a short delivery time when Millbank Studios' analogue chroma keyer failed.

A Safire digital chroma keyer was delivered a day after it was ordered, allowing the studio to continue broadcasting as usual. Safire replaced a faulty chroma keyer in a single camera studio, which is used by independent regional broadcasters to conduct interviews for daily news programmes.

Located near the UK’s political heart of Westminster in London, one of Millbank Studios’ specialities is covering government news. Without the replacement chroma keyer from Crystal Vision, the company would have had to use the main studio for chroma keying. This would also depend on the area being free and would be more expensive as the main studio requires more staff. Furthermore, the company would be reluctant to tie up the vision mixer just for a chroma keying function.

Nick Hattingh of Millbank Studios said “Installation was incredibly easy, we just pulled out the old analogue keyer and slotted in the new digital one. We could even re-use the existing cables. Operation was incredibly intuitive - I didn't even have to open the manual to get started. The quality of the keying was excellent, the controls are easy to use and compared to the previous chroma keyer, Safire has several extra features.”

Millbank Studios is operating the chroma keyer with the 2U Safire Controller.