Workflows and world-records: driving live and immersive experiences with mediaPro

mediaPro International’s Technical Manager for Video, Konstantin Laptev, never expected his career to take him where he is today. After graduating from Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod state university in 2013, he initially spent several years as a video editor and motion designer, creating broadcast graphics for TV.

“It was there that I recognised how visuals could be used to tell impactful stories that move audiences emotionally,” he remembers. “But after a few years, I no longer just wanted to tell those stories for a TV audience. I wanted to tell them for a live event audience, through mediaPro.”

This desire to work in audiovisual for events led Laptev to specialise in media servers and projection mapping. He then transitioned into full-scale live production and combined creative storytelling with technical precision to deliver immersive visual experiences, which led to an opportunity to join mediaPro in 2021.

Working at mediaPro

For Laptev, relocating to Dubai to work for mediaPro was an opportunity to do more of what he loved best. For more than 20 years, mediaPro has gone from strength to strength, growing from a team of five when it opened in the UAE in 2004 to almost 1,500 professionals across 12 countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe by 2024.

“By joining mediaPro, I knew I would be able to further expand this expertise, contributing to high-profile, large-scale events across the Middle East and operating at the highest level of production standards,” Laptev reveals.

Today, Laptev has delivered several influential projects along with the wider mediaPro team - including MDLBEAST Soundstorm, Saudi Arabia’s landmark music festival that recently attracted over 450,000 visitors to watch performances from Cardi B, Post Malone, Pitbull, Calvin Harris, and more.

“The mediaPro team managed the playback system across the festival, along with the Park Stage, Tunnel Stage and 6AG Stage. We also provided the site-wide screen control system that connected all festival stages into one network for seamless content exchange,” Laptev explains. “This allowed us to do things like send signals from the central control room to any stage in case of emergency, which helped make sure all the fans could enjoy the festival safely.”

Another recent project was a landmark projection event for the One Za’abeel’s luxury hotel launch. For this project, mediaPro delivered projected visuals spanning the sides of the hotel’s two skyscrapers, as well as the cantilevered building connecting them, over 100 metres above the ground. To do this, the team completed extensive laser scanning of the building’s north face, then created visuals and installed the necessary infrastructure to display the projections over three nights.

As a result, the One Za’abeel project was awarded three Guinness World Records: the longest projection mapping in the world, the largest architectural temporary projection mapping in the world, and the largest mesh screen projection in the world.

Relying on Disguise

Throughout these and dozens of other corporate, government, and festival AV projects, the mediaPro team have relied on Disguise. “I have been working with Disguise for over seven years,” Laptev reveals. “I was first introduced to it through industry colleagues and the live- production community, as Disguise is widely regarded as the most reliable and scalable platform for complex, large-scale projection and video playback. After experiencing its performance and reliability on large-scale installations, I quickly saw why.”

Laptev now regularly uses both Disguise media servers and Disguise’s Designer software in his role as Technical Manager for Video at mediaPro, where he oversees and executes the full technical cycle on projects, from projection study to show programming and onsite production. “What really sets Disguise apart is the extensive range of supported protocols built directly into the software, including Art-Net, OSC, Telnet and numerous others,” he continues.

“This allows mediaPro team to set up perfect bidirectional communication with lighting consoles, tracking systems, and the rest of the show-control team on any live show, making the whole production feel like one unified ecosystem. On top of that, Disguise operates seamlessly with Notch and Unreal Engine through native support and optimised, low-latency workflows, ensuring real-time performance in demanding live environments.”

In day-to-day operations at mediaPro, Laptev’s most frequently used tool is Disguise’s Mapping Matter, which he leverages to help plan projector positions with millimetre precision before directly export them into Disguise Designer. According to Laptev, this dramatically accelerates preparation and pre-production across all projection projects.

The workflow was especially useful when mediaPro worked on One Za’abeel, which incorporated extensive use of Mapping Matter together with Designer and six of Disguise’s VX 4+ media servers. “Leveraging Mapping Matter for planning such a gigantic project enabled precise projector placement and content alignment on the massive structure,” Laptev explains. “This integrated workflow was instrumental in mitigating technical risk."

Looking to the future

As Laptev begins his fifth year working on live events at mediaPro, his personal dream is to take on even bigger events than before, like the Super Bowl halftime show, the Olympic opening ceremony, or similar global-scale spectaculars: the ultimate stages where technology, creativity, and millions of viewers come together.

At mediaPro Intenational, he continues to gain consistent, practical, hands-on experience across real-world shows around the Middle East, as well as Asia. “Practical exposure is critical to developing technical confidence and problem-solving ability,” Laptev explains. “That’s the biggest advice I’d give to industry newcomers, too. You need to develop a strong foundation by gaining a thorough understanding of signal flow, networking principles, and core projection-mapping concepts. Then, you need to build deep expertise in at least one media server platform such as Disguise, while maintaining a broad awareness of complementary technologies, including alternative media servers, lighting consoles, projection systems, and show-control infrastructure. Most importantly, you need to always remember to have fun and enjoy telling stories that fans will remember far beyond show day.”

Learn more about Laptev and his work at mediaPro here.