Freeman is the world’s leading brand experience company. They specialize in designing, planning, and delivering the biggest exhibitions, shows, and conferences. The company currently handles the logistics, digital solutions, and event technology of over 1,000 major events each year.
Customers turn to Freeman when they need an impressive and innovative event where everything just works. Freeman is proud to bring the most amazing and cutting-edge event experiences, all while being more reliable than the competition. Freeman stays at the forefront of the industry by always striving to improve on all aspects of live event production, especially the reliability of the AV equipment they use.
Freeman AV is the division of the company that handles all audio-visual aspects of the show. In their Dallas warehouse alone, they handle the logistics for as many as seven events per week. Sometimes the team only has a day to unpack equipment from one show, load it all onto a truck, and send it to another show.
"During the busiest times, we’ll have anywhere from a dozen to 18 trucks with gear a day, coming in and going out."
The AV equipment the company uses must be robust enough to handle frequent transportation. Moreover, the equipment has to work reliably at every event, since at a live show you only have one shot to get it right. From shipping and setup to the actual show-floor operations, there are numerous points of failure. Freeman works hard to minimize these as much as possible. Whenever Freeman AV is looking for new equipment, reliability and robustness are must-haves.
A game-changer in the customer offering
Freeman AV needed a reliable solution for video capture and recording. They found Epiphan Pearl to be a great fit, but felt a few tweaks would make it perfect for them.
Freeman AV’s industry-driven suggestions
For increased robustness and portability:
- Replace spinning HDD with an SSD
- Change form factor to fit in a 2U rackmount
- Update firmware to enable portable configuration presets
For increased reliability:
- Build in redundancy for recording backup
The company offered this feedback to Epiphan Video, and from these conversations came the idea of the Pearl Rackmount Twin. Freeman’s suggestions were based on years of experience using professional AV gear. Epiphan recognized these improvements would help take Pearl to the next level of professional AV hardware and exceed future customers’ expectations. The final result not only satisfied Freeman but also many other clients, who started showing interest in Pearl Rackmount Twin soon after Epiphan made it available to the public.
"Epiphan Pearl has been a game-changer in our customer offering."
Live event production continues to evolve with informed customers asking for the latest live video innovations. Freeman works hard to stay ahead of the curve. Epiphan Video has been working to meet the needs of customers as well, prompting the additions of Pearl Mini and Pearl Nano to the Pearl family of hardware encoders.
Epiphan is proud to continue to work with industry leaders like Freeman to create products that are trusted in the field.