As Telegenic gears up for coverage of the UEFA Champions League Final in 3D later this month, Adrian Pennington finds out more about the key equipment inside its latest 3D OB truck.
Telegenic’s third dedicated 3D truck is having its finishing touches applied at systems integrator Sony Professional ahead of debuting at Wembley for Sky’s production of the UEFA Champions League Final in 3D on 28 May.
Sky is the outside broadcaster’s main client. Telegenic’s T18 and T19 trucks are rotated on two to three 3D Premiership matches a week for Sky 3D but non-sports OBs are also increasing in demand including 3D productions of Peter Gabriel and Kylie concerts plus coverage of June’s Isle of Wight music festival in the planning. Its trucks also aided the production of the opera feature Carmen 3D.
“We see a growing demand for non-sport live and recorded programming and events,” says managing director Mike Spencer. So much so that Telegenic plans to build a fourth 3D truck to cater for studio based light entertainment 3D programming, largely from Sky.
“I expect to order another as soon as the third is finished but I’ll make this one physically smaller so it is more accessible for London streets,” says Spencer.
Like the existing vehicles, the latest 13.6m triple expanding truck is similar in size and spec and is also being outfitted by Sony Professional. It can accommodate 24 camera channels, or 12 3D positions, with greater flexibility on rig choice and cameras designed in.
Sony P1 cameras will form part of the acquisition mix to enable greater flexibility in working with mirror and side by side positions in stadia where space is at a premium.
For the first time MPE-200 processors are being wired in and while this doesn’t rule out the use of 3Ality rigs and SIPs the more likely option is for Element Technica rigs, with which Sony has done most work collecting metadata.
There will be a single fibre output from the rigs back to 12 HDFA-200 adapters. Other kit includes a Sony MVS 8000X switcher, Calrec Audio console, 10 EVS servers, Vutrix 2D monitors, Sony 3D monitors in the engineering area with an Evertz multiviewer and JVC professional monitoring in the production space. It can be configured for up to eight convergence operators.
Core to the flexible design of the scanner is a NV8576 (576×1152) Hybrid router, part of Miranda’s NV8500 series. It is populated with a mix of standard and hybrid cards and gives Telegenic a 498×864 3Gig standard matrix, 64×80 3Gig de-embedding/embedding matrix, and a 6×6 MADI matrix.
“This de-embed/embedding option enables them to bring in video from outside sources and shuffle it as needed,” explains Tim Walker, Miranda’s product manager. “You could take stereo pairs and change the language tracks, for example.”
The Hybrid router also manages embedded Dolby E, keeping it properly phase aligned and introducing minimal audio to video delay of just three video lines, a key factor in Telegenic’s selection of the product.
“Once the audio has been de-embedded or come in on a MADI input it is available as part of a full, flat mono matrix to any of the embedding or MADI outputs,” explains Walker. “One differentiating factor is that all of the audio paths are protected by our Hybrid Redundant Crosspoint.”
At NAB Miranda premiered 8900 audio concentrators which can sit 300m away from the router and manage mux or demux 32 AES into or from MADI.
“This allows the user to place these 8900 boxes close to audio source and destination devices, reducing the cable masses needed to be run to and from the router to just a handful of coaxes,” says Walker. “It reduces weight, simplifies cable management, and keeps the physical size of the router small. This is a huge product for us as it extends the capabilities of the Hybrid router to address more applications for trucks or fixed facilities.”
According to Malcolm Robinson, who heads up the Professional Services OB team, Sony is fielding increasing tenders from across Europe for new build scanners with 3D built in. “3D-capable is becoming as standard a requirement as HD-ready was a few years ago,” he says.
