2007

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OB-Truck Village under AURUS Control
Some people refer to these vehicles as »The world’s
biggest Outside
Broadcast Unit«. One could also call them an OB-truck village. These
new TV trucks, commissioned by the Commercial TV-production
company Euroscena, based in Milan and Rome, can create a mobile
production centre with unprecedented capabilities, especially when
used in combination. Euroscena contracted Thomson/Grass Valley to
construct a set of two large OB trucks plus another vehicle as tender
and power-supply. The ensemble named »‘Mobile Production Centre 34
High Defi nition« or MPC 34 HD for short, hit the road early in 2007.
Space in OB trucks is usually at a premium. Not so with this fleet.
When parked up, the main vehicle, 34A, can be enormously enlarged
along its overall length using extensions on both sides. It then
comprises two production control rooms, an AURUS audio control
room, VTR and slomo workspaces, a camera control room and even a
comfortable 25 m2 VIP zone. The second vehicle, 34B, offers an extra
facility. This is a Chromakey equipped 30 m2 TV-production studio with
a retractable side wall. It also offers a secondary production control room, a small
AURUS audio-control room, and even toilets, which may well be another first in mobile
production!
When parked alongside each other a roofed passageway can connect the two trucks.
Thanks to its diesel generators the
tender can feed this mobile production island with suffi cient power to operate completely
independent of the mains.
The choice of AURUS and NEXUS benefi ts the sound in many ways. Regardless of its
power and the 1,272 sources and
1,024 destinations, this ultra-compact system requires just seven Base Devices
occupying only 39 rack units in height. Another key factor was the AURUS’ direct
access user interface and handy multichannel mixing capabilities. Euroscena
uses this set-up for producing material in formats up to 7.1, which then can be
Dolby E encoded and routed via NEXUS.
Euroscena has owned a big digital OB vehicle for TV productions with onboard
STAGETEC technology since May 2004. This has been used at countless major
events during recent years. The NEXUS optical network as well as the totally
reliable CANTUS main and slave consoles blazed a trail for AURUS and NEXUS in
this unparalleled new OB set-up.
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