The 16-camera Columbus is Gearhouse Broadcast USA’s newest OB Mobile Unit – fully 4K capable and one of the most technologically sophisticated on the road – commissioned to serve large sports and entertainment productions. To equip it, Gearhouse turned to Lawo for many of the critical audio and video components.
Built by Gearhouse Broadcast’s UK-based systems integration team, the truck can handle 16 4K/HD cameras with six additional inputs for RF cameras, and has a full 4K monitor wall (the first in the US). With Lawo’s VSM System, high-end audio tools and IP-based video processing, it can handle the most demanding productions in the live business, sports and entertainment.
Key to enabling Columbus to accommodate both large sports and entertainment productions is its audio section, centred on a Lawo mc256 digital audio console. Large and ambitious live productions require high DSP performance and channel counts, as well as direct access to many audio channels via fader. Columbus is equipped with a 64-fader mc²56 console in a 48-bay frame, with an integrated routing matrix of 8192 x 8192 crosspoints. The console offers 540 fully processing channels, 64 AES I/O on the main core with 32 Madi and 4 Ravenna/AES67 interfaces. It also has a fully redundant architecture.
The meter bridge shows all fader levels clearly on the console’s HD touchscreen displays, with multi-row metering allowing easy viewing of all fader levels as well as signals from other layers or banks. For further customization, the overbridge also accommodates additional modules, such as a user panel or RTW goniometer.
At the heart of the truck is a VSM control and monitoring system on redundant servers that has access to and controls all relevant hardware in the OB. VSM gives operators access to the routing parameters of the truck’s Imagine Platinum routers and multiviewers, Grass Valley Kayenne vision mixer, and RTS intercom, as well as the Lawo mc256 audio console and Dallis frame.
Using the VSM panels, operators can prepare and save complete workflows in advance of a production, and can recall complete global snapshots of the whole truck with a button-push shortly before going live. In addition, the VSM system acts as a full tally and labelling system with no need for a dedicated single tally solution – a major benefit in terms of shorter set-up times, preparation and user training.
A further part of the installation involves three Lawo V_pro8 eight-channel video processors, which allow interfacing of different video formats, as well as audio management, frame synchronisation and embedding and de-embedding of audio to the 4K signals. Already flexible and capable, its recent update has given the V_pro8 an improved A/V sync tool, which in addition to the native V__line sync pattern and the EBU pattern, can now also read the Vistek Valid8 format.
Gearhouse’s Columbus passed its baptism of fire with a flawless production at the Air & Style Snowboard Festival finals, held in Los Angeles in mid-February.
More: www.lawo.com
