MA Lighting
The company was founded in 1983 by Michael Adenau (MA) and enjoys strong growth from the very beginning until today. More than 10,000 MA control desks are being used all over
the world and MA´s digital dimming systems have become an industry standard.
The success accelerated in 1985, when software specialist Ernst Ebrecht joined MA Lighting as a partner. In this period MA
introduced the Lightcommander 24 and Lightcommander 48 control desks.
When launched in 1992 the MA Scancommander caused a huge stir in the burgeoning world of moving light control. This product established MA Lighting as a leading innovator of lighting control for the global touring and event sector. Leading producers of intelligent lighting showed great interest in MA's new operating philosophy, which radically differed from the historical "dimmer -oriented" control systems of that time.
In the spring of 1998 MA showed the world the eagerly awaited grandMA console. This hybrid lighting control console brought a new level of hardware sophistication to the lighting world. The full color touch screens, motorized faders, built in UPS (uninterruptible power supply) and hard drive were only the beginning.
The summer of 2000 saw the launch of a host of new products from MA, the grandMA light, the grandMA replay unit and the grandMA offline editor. In the autumn of 2001, the grandMA range will be completed with the introduction of the grandMA ultra-light. The ultra-light has 1,024 channels but retains the main features of a grandMA at a very competitive price.
Today, MA Lighting are well known for their technical know-how and have achieved an unique international reputation for its operational philosophy. MA´s award-winning products are extremely reliable and offer cutting-edge solutions for
dimming and control.
Organizational Structure
This story of success is strongly based on the teamwork between MA and Lightpower. Lightpower, located in Paderborn, is handling the international distribution of MA products since 1987. The two companies work very closely together and, through their respective roles, have made each other stronger. Production, and research & development are located in MA´s modern
headquarters in Waldbuettelbrunn. For marketing, sales and technical support Lightpower has founded a new subsidiary: MA Lighting International. All of these activities are coordinated in their Paderborn facilities.
Used Media Servers
Media servers are a type of software application or computer hardware which are primarily used to store, share and process media files. Media servers can be specialist enterprise class machines that are capable of providing video on demand, or they can just be a simple PC or even attached storage device, although dedicated software and/or machines is used for professional applications.
The video processing server, as media servers are often labeled, is becoming steadily more popular in theater, concerts, corporate events, exhibitions and night clubs due to the increasing usage of motion graphics in such events. For this purposes, the image processing system is likely to be a high-spec PC, with a boosted hard drive, graphics system and RAM, together with something like a solid-state hard drive or a RAID system.
These media servers serve as a high performance video engine, as they will run software which allows technicians to control and manipulate the media content, such as controlling the playback of the content. In order to do so, media servers will usually included a MIDI or DMX512-A input.
A media processing engine is usually able to capture media, using specialist hardware like tuner cards, which can capture broadcasted media from analog signals. Once this media is digitally encoded, it can then be saved onto media servers and then manipulated according to the desires of the technician.
VPU - Corporate used VPU with (2) SDI Cards and W7 Update.
