SOFT France has extended its relationship with Pro-Bel with the purchase and installation of routing and control equipment for its flagship HD truck – Sirius HD 96 x 96 and Sirius SD 96 x 256 routers, together with control system and panels.
Yves Pianfetti, Technical Engineer with SOFT, said, “Our objective was to increase the range of services available from SOFT by taking advantage of the latest technologies; we were looking for the best and latest equipment on the market and Pro-Bel could deliver it.” He added, “They’ve also proved the total reliability between the Sirius router and Snell & Wilcox Kahuna mixer, which was key to our decision.”
Since the equipment has been installed, SOFT has produced several productions, one of which is Le Jour du Seigneur for France 2. The requirement was to produce an SD and an HD version – with the HD version serving as a test to qualify the workflow and the quality of the programme. Everything remained in 16:9, which was a challenge – especially in SD.
With the chosen technology, the new OB truck is versatile and is also being used by TPS Star (a French digital channel which has been bought by Canal+). They use it for both their HD programmes, which are converted to SD for broadcast.
