Professional Show builds OB van for Chad TV

A complete mobile facility on three axes with drive on six wheels, designed to operate in extreme weather conditions. That’s the nutshell description of a new OB van conceived, designed and implemented for the state TV broadcaster of Chad by Italian company Professional Show, working in conjunction with the team at One.

The mobile unit has to perform the function of a complete and totally independent TV transmitting station. It must be able to operate in extreme situations, typical of the African continent, and then also perform a vast range of tasks, from shooting to post-production and the broadcasting of programmes.

The new OB van makes it possible to produce TV programmes and send AV contributions to the central control room and then the broadcasting network, rather than spreading feeds directly via satellite, where everything is self-produced on-board.

The new vehicle has two TV cameras on board (expandable to four) with triax connections to the video mixer, four wireless TV cameras, and three remote cameras in the studio installed inside the vehicle.

The control room houses the various technical equipment integrated into the system. The vehicle, of about 10m, also provides an internal shooting studio, in addition to audio and video control rooms and technical areas.

The vehicle is a Mercedes Actros 3340 selected as an all-wheel drive, capable to walk the streets with a slope of up to 45%, while the construction of the carriages was carried out by Tomassini Style. In the design process, two asymmetric expansions were conceived in order to have sufficient room to increase the space when the vehicle is in operation. This allows the user to host, in addition to the tech and the control rooms, the shooting area as well.

In addition, thanks to the size of the work areas, it is possible to host at the back of the van a storage area for cameras, tripods, wireless transmitters and more. Meanwhile, a partial lowering of the roof makes ​​it possible to install a satellite dish of 1.80 cm and the headend of the sat up-link.

The TV cameras are Grass Valley LDK8000s. Two have been provided with triax connection, while there is possibility to add two more in the future. But the novelty for a vehicle of this type relates to the presence of four wireless cameras, always LDK8000, against the common trend since it is usual to have one or two wireless cameras and 4-6 cables connected.

For the video mixer, the van uses a Grass Valley Kayak HD100, whilst a Yamaha DM1000 handles audio mixing. Also available are three remotely operated  Panasonic AWHE120 cameras. For the matrix, the decision was made to opt for an Evertz 5601MSC, combined with the change-over, which is configured on 64X64 3G HD and 32X32 AES for audio. For graphics and post production the decision was made in favour of an Avid system with Motion Graphics and Media Composer Nitris DX. There are also two Grass Valley K2 Dyno servers dedicated to storage, with a MAM software and slow-motion play-out, in order to realise the simple playlist necessary to the transmission of programs directly from the OB -Van itself.

For monitoring, the choice fell on Marshall and Black Magic, while audio monitors come from TSL. The satellite uplink configuration was designed by Diem Technologies and encompasses an AVL antenna (180cm) and Ericsson encoder and decoder technology.