Euromedia takes new C42 hybrid OB van on the road for Tour de France coverage
When the world’s best cyclists set off on each stage of the incomparable Tour de France, the fans that line up along the roadsides are joined by many more via the race’s extensive live radio and TV coverage. The 102nd edition of the world’s biggest cycling contest takes 22 teams of nine riders – a field of up to 198 starters – over 3,360km of road, through 21 stages in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. After starting in the Dutch city of Utrecht on 4 July, the tour will close in its traditional manner on 26 July, on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Produced by Euromedia, this year’s event coverage makes use of a new Lawo-equipped OB truck. The new C42 OB hybrid production vehicle supports 10 to 12 cameras, and is designed specifically to meet the demands of sports, variety, games and entertainment production. On the Tour de France, it is co-ordinate all the RF audio feeds before forwarding them to the truck responsible for the international broadcast feed. It is also able to provide an emergency backup in the case of any failure.
The OB accompanies the riders at every stage of the race, with its Lawo V__pro8 video processor unit used for colour correction of the video signals received from the motorcycle camera teams. The sound mix is performed on a 48-fader Lawo mc²56 audio mixing console with a space-saving 7U compact core providing 144 DSP channels and a capacity of 5120 x 5120 crosspoints in redundant operation.
Three DALLIS frames – two for use as stageboxes outside the vehicle –provide the necessary I/O. Overall control of the devices is assigned to an L-S-B Virtual Studio Manager (VSM) System, managing communication and switching of units from different manufacturers serving a range of functions.
The V__pro8 is a compact high-performance video processor that allows eight video channels to be used freely with 384 audio channels. It offers cross-format conversion, color correction and embedding and de-embedding, using protocols including 3G-SDI, MADI and RAVENNA, under easy touch operation.