Since December 2013, a large new OB truck has taken up residence at the
Roodepoort headquarters of Dimension TV, the independent, one-stop outside
broadcast facility which has been in operation since 1997. The new trailer, which
the Dimension TV team has been assembling for months, is a double expandable
rig wired for a maximum of 24 cameras. This unit is the latest addition to
Dimension TV’s extensive fleet of large, medium and small OB units.
The new OB truck, which is called OB6, can accommodate 20x Grass Valley
LDK8000 cameras plus 4x Grass Valley LDK8300 super slow-motion cameras. The
video router is a Grass Valley Trinix 224 x 256, with eight TMV boards, controlled
by virtual studio manager system (VSM). The production room is outfitted with 18
x25′ Sony OLED monitors and the facility also includes an EVS room (the facility
includes six EVSs) complete with 12 x 23′ LCD monitors. There is also a video
tape (VT) room, which can accommodate up to four EVS X-Files. Vision quality
control is done on five 17′ Sony OLED monitors.
As far as audio is concerned, OB6 comes with an Artemis Light audio console
with Bluefin 2 High Density Signal Processing, 32-multi-layer faders and five
Hydra 2 I/O wall boxes, providing 88 microphone line inputs, 73 line outputs, 32
AES (audio engineering society) inputs and outputs, two MADI (multichannel
audio digital interface) interfaces, eight Opto inputs and eight relays. All
connectivity is via single-mode RC fibre. Also included are two Lawo PRO-V de-
embedder and embedder units, a Telex ADAM-M Frame Digital Matrix
Communication system with 64 ports and 16 MADI ports, supporting analogue
4W, MADI, AES, RVON and OMNEO, with full redundancy. Joining all of this
together is a Grass Valley Apex 512 x 512 stereo audio router with VSM manager
control system. Also included are 24 x KP12 CLD panels, a CTP camera talk-back
system, four telephone hybrids and two AEQ ISDN codecs.
OB6 was first put to the test on a golf tournament in February, and appears to
have been a complete success.
To find out more about OB6 or any of Dimension TV’s fleet and other offerings,
call 011 472 7512 or visit www.dimensiontv.co.za.
